Multimage Chronicles: The Legend of The Founding
by CSS.Stravag
Summary: MMC Set 1, mass crossover fic. A wizard is sent on a cross-dimesnional campaign at the behest of the Fates to help stop the war Ragnarok. His campaign will begin in one place, but will cross thousands of dimensions in an effort to stop the inevitable. Before the expansion, though, that wizard has a planet to contend with before he pushes outward... (Chapter 14 up)
1. Legacy

(MultiMage Chronicles, Set 01: The Chronicle of the Founding)

For every reality, there is an unreality. For every hard fact, there is a supposition that cannot itself be completely denied nor vindicated. For every instance of existence we believe to be real, there may be millions spurred by our dreams, as real as we, yet as ethereal to mortal hands as our dreams are.

The Chronicles of the Multimage is one such look at unreality, only with a twist: where unreality meets itself many fold, and in turn encounters an unreal reality. Where long-discredited mythology meets mundane modernism meets wildly fantastic dreams and entertainment. Where one droplet of water descending into the lake may have little impact, or can destroy the shoreline with a tsunami. Where unreality itself is challenged and even the norms of imagination are flayed to dust in the wind, leaving only the belief that anything is possible...and impossible all the same. Herein begins a tale of reality and unreality, of a future itself so warped from all premise of possibility that even the insane would not conclude the question of it being sane or insane. The premise of possibility, fully exploited: the dice that favor beings now may not do so later, and vice-versa, in the pursuit of the possible and the impossible, the mundane and the extravagant, the fantasy and the reality. Where elements disparate are wagered in challenge to sensibility, and common belief is challenged by the wager of what others consider impossible, shall fate be writ.

On a more serious and less mind-screw note, this is the beginning of my long saga of the Magi, quite literally the most insane crossover I have ever put logic and plan to. A multiple-set story, I began the planning phase of this work when I was twelve, though the core concept remains relatively unchanged from then, the flow of narrative and the elements of the crossover have changed drastically. It has expanded and shrunk, collapsed twice of its own internal pressure, suffered five complete-overhaul revisions, and yet it still exists in a logical form. As a testament to the perversity of the plot, with each overhaul it has grown more gritty, more brutal, and only now have I deemed that it is finally worthy of being locked in and written. After over a decade of revisions, revamps, and recollections, it is finally ready.

The disparity of the crossover elements will come into play, of that I guarantee, but keep in mind that the main solid base of the story is reality itself. At every point in the story, I beseech a reader to ask himself or herself 'is it logical that (**insert premise here**) would act in this fashion in real life, should it exist in real life?' I will challenge your acceptance of norms and standards, and this will come to evidence fast enough in these works, even in this first set (of no less than six) will you have cause to ask yourself the above question. In return, I expect you to challenge my presented theories on every matter that you deem implausible. On any theory I present, I am always willing to listen to alternate opinion; any of you who are veteran of my other works know that I am receptive of reader input, both negative and positive. If you hold a differing viewpoint on a matter, I wholeheartedly encourage you to express it, though I do make the request that it be civil. Much of my writing has been strengthened on the input of the readers, as veteran readers of the Archangel's Amazing Adventures can attest.

All that being said, shall we now get on with the obligatory notes and the tale of the impossible come possible?

GENERAL DECLARATIONS (These apply to all sections, and other declarations may be added in the chapters)

Note that Stravag does not own any part of any included works, in whole or in part. By my use of the included works, I intend no challenge to the copyright or the legal ownership of such works. I claim ownership only of the original elements, characters, and premises of this story.

Writing note: numbers in parentheses, like this: (0) mean check the footnote for something else I think goes along with the thought. Could be informative, could be humorous, or both. This will be my preferred method of including explanation or detail information that would otherwise disrupt the flow of a story, providing the backdrop that is deserved of the disparate elements without breaking into the narrative with an author filibuster.

Writing Note II: Starting with this work, I am now including a new informational section below the Footnotes, called Included Elements. This provides a reference for readers to material that I have included in the story that may not be readily evident where I derived the logic from. It can also be considered a reference point for any readers who want to do some further research of their own, should they have time and resource available.

BAAAAAD LANGUAGE WARNING: Much as in real life, there will be foul language in some sections. Even the best of us let fly a four-letter word when really pissed off, startled, or else. Though it will be seen, it shall not be grossly common.

VIOLENCE WARNING: It is fairly safe to say, regardless of this being a massive crossover, or as a direct cause thereto, there shall be an amazing amount of violence. Get used to the thought. Expect strange conclusions to some fights, and expectable conclusions to others.

DICE WARNING: To simulate the randomness of life, elements of this story, all derivatives, all side-stories, and all continuations thereof shall be subject to the use of random number generation to determine the course of events. This will lead to otherwise illogical or against-pattern outcomes to some elements in the story, though this is expected by the author and will not be glossed over. Real life itself is random, and that is how this story shall flow, for the most part.

RELATIONSHIP WARNING: I may normally be fairly light on this subject in my writing, since more of my focus is on the political and military dimensions of the conflict at hand, but in this case there is some political dimension and some military dimension in addition to normal interactions. Expect to see some canon pairings, some non-canon pairings, and some very, very strange pairings. Fate does weird things to those it favors.

ANTI-POLITICAL-CORRECTNESS WARNING: To strive to be politically correct serves no purpose, for real life makes no such distinction. I will not do so. Death before dishonor. End of story. (note that this also applies to normal fandom principle: if I have to choose between reality and preferred perception, I will choose reality).

And NEG, THERE IS NO CHARACTER BASHING IN THIS STORY! PERIOD! Every character is entitled to some props even if their only purpose in the story is the classic image of deus ex machina. You will see this rule in full effect mostly in later Sets of the story, though it may come into play in some part here in the first one.

* * *

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 01, Chapter 01: Legacy)

"He is good," the Minos trainee declared.

"He is excellent, Agrippa will make a fine frontline mercenary when graduated," his younger sister adds to the appraisal.

A circle fifteen feet of width was etched and depressed into the ground near Recruit Barracks Four, surrounded by benches and trampled weeds. Barracks Four, sheltering those who were almost ready to become Durgan Bladesmen, was the final stop before the recruits joined the Bladesmen as a territorial guard or a mercenary trooper. For that reason, it was also the most active and most difficult of the barracks groups, with no less than three quarters of the daylight devoted to battle training and sparring. Now was no different for the trainees as it would be on any other day.

"Flexible, very flexible in how he moves and thinks," the Atrebas trainee says. "His swordcraft is a hair behind the lead, though."

"And what about you, tough guy?" the sister declares. "Will you be a mercenary, or a home guard?"

"I don't know yet," the Atrebas replies after a moment. "I want to learn of the rest of the world, but at the same time I never want to lose sight of home, of how we came to be."

"Think you can take a Spartan yet?" the Minos asks.

"No," the Atrebas declares immediately. "They are specialized to a few weapons types, polearms and swords mostly. Durgan soldiers train for a variety of arms and tactics, it will be a decade before I am that skilled."

"No way, could you not just—ah, Stan wins again," the Minos declares.

"Who shall challenge me next?" Stan asks. "Not you, cheater," and he points the training blade right to the chest of the Atrebas.

"Cheat? Well, only when reported," the accused replies. There was no challenge from the ring of trainees; "Looks like I am the challenge by default. My apologies, Stan."

"I shall get you this time," Stan says as the Atrebas steps into the combat circle. "Eric, you will not walk away from this one."

"Everyone says that. Nobody accomplishes. Shall you?"

"Gah!" Stan began the match by driving in against the apparently-unarmed Eric Atrebas, a thrust aimed low to impale and disembowl. Almost entirely as expected, Eric slammed the heels of his hands into the opposing sides of the blade, driving them together as he twisted the blade out of the path of strike and compressing it to a stop. Da—aaaammmit!" Stan's foul shout was drawn out by his fall to the ground, as before he could pull and reset Eric had maneuvered to his side, tripping him to the ground while twisting the practice sword out of his hand.

"There is your loss by default, Stan," and the practice sword landed in the dust of the practice ring next to his splayed-out form. The observers let out a collective sigh as they began breathing; every time, breath was held baited for the strike, and the inevitable capture. Eric found it amusing, even after a year of using this skill in the open, it still choked people up every time. It was wholly unnatural, he figured.

"Speed is not offense, speed is not defense," Stan reminds himself rather forcefully.

"Skill is offense, skill is defense," Eric completes the thought. "Come, we shall conduct a proper bout now."

"You shall not."

All eyes were immediately on the speaker, the Lieutenant-General of the Durgan Legion. "Sir," Eric says as he comes to attention, shortly followed by the rest of the training cadre unit.

"You will test your skill against a real blade, recruit, handled by a real soldier," he continues. "Stanythe Agrippa, clear the ring."

"Sir!" Stanythe (most called him 'Stan' for short reference) was not the first or the last to give the Lieutenant-General a wide berth to enter and face Eric. "Knock 'em dead, Eric, and you may end up with his rank!"

"Thanks, Stan, like I want that kind of authority," Eric replies crassly.

"You do not?" The Lieutenant-General asks, bracing his shield and aiming his sword. "Then why do you chase the Mayor-General's daughter?"

"She finds me attractive, I find her headstrong and fierce behind the eyes. It works out in the end. I _could_ care less about the Mayor-General's position, yet caring any less than I currently do would entitle effort on my part, effort better spent on the battle."

The Lieutenant-General chuckles grimly. "There is hope yet for this generation. Now, show me in slowed action how you trap a blade, recruit."

Eric figured as much. Everyone wanted to know how the hell he could do this without getting skewered every time. For he, it was a factor of reaction, speed, strength, and gratuitous amounts of training. Others had said something about 'The hands of the Gods' or something similar (opinions varied on which Gods or Goddesses), and Eric had no real intention on disabusing them of that belief. After all, who was he to challenge the possibility that the Gods really were guiding his hands?

The thrust was itself slow, so Eric mimicked its speed as best as he could with his actions. As it began, his hands flattened parallel to the ground to match the direction of the blade's thrust. With the blade passing past his shield, Eric reacted akin to his pacing to a normal strike, clamping down on the blade from two directions and shoving backwards through the intended travel of the blade, neutralizing the thrust's forward momentum faster than it began. The blade moved very little farther toward Eric after he began the trap, and incrementally began inching back towards the enemy.

"We are drawn, no offense, no defense," the Lieutenant-General declares.

"Not quite, sir," the apprentice replies. "Try again at full combat speed."

"If you miss, it will kill you," the Lieutenant-General replies.

"All of life is a chance, Lieutenant-General, mine being no different. If my life is taken in such brazen foolery, let it serve as warning not to try this in real battle."

"Very well," the enemy replies. The thrust began, just barely visible to the onlookers (a small crowd had gathered of many age brackets).

The trap struck just as demonstrated, though in this case the blade simply neutralized due to his foe's inherent strength advantage, it did not inch backwards. Even still, Eric began his rather-infamous follow-up to the trap, a technique the senior officer was not readied for. With the blade held at the horizontal, all he had to do was snap his wrists to vertical while driving his arms past the arm of the Lieutenant-General. His foe found he could not maintain grip on a sword that bucked, spun and wedged in three different directions at once, and could not stop the trainee from effectively disarming him. Eric moved through his own disarmament technique, clearing out of the way of a possible shield charge from the enemy, and took grip on the pommel of the full-bladed sword to finish the matter. In a scene of pure embarrassment to the Lieutenant-General, Eric did not use a lethal slash to finish the bout, he used the flat of the blade to whelp the erstwhile enemy in the buttocks. The sound of the impact was loud enough to echo between the nearby buildings.

"Oh MY!" the Lieutenant-General shouts in bellow, completely surprised by such a brazen and callous tactic. He yelped twice louder on the second and third such strikes, with the fourth flaying to his rear driving him to his knees. There was no fifth strike; Eric simply sheathed the sword on the Lieutenant-General with typical Durgan flair and stepped back.

"Is that sufficient demonstration, sir?" Eric asks after coming to attention.

"Uh," the Lieutenant-General groans. "Ow, it has been long since anyone mocked me in that fashion." Slowly he rose up to full stand, then turns to Eric. "You are right, you are not worthy of the Mayor-General's position, outright deriding a senior officer like that. You would make an excellent instructor for these whelps, though, should you find the battle distasteful."

"He has much to answer for before that cold day in Hell comes," the voice of the Mayor's messenger declares coldly. "Eric Atrebas, you are to report to the Mayor's building immediately, to stand trial."

"What the hell is this about?" Eric asks nobody in particular. Shrugs and absent grunts were the answer of the day.

-x-x-x-

It was a bright, cheery morning, about halfway between waking hour and lunch hour. The kind of morning where everything was beautiful, except for the hint of hot sun that was berating the towns in the area, and promised to get steadily worse. The kind of day that should someone's fate be writ somewhere, be it stars or portents, a scholar would be hard pressed to notice due to the wonder of nature showing all her colors. Even the birds and forest rodents knew it was a good day, and acted accordingly.

It was a good thing, as well. Eric Atrebas did not want to suffer his execution on a dreary day. Something about dying in the rain enervated the Durgan Swordsman, forcing him to train harder, even harder in the rain. It was that training that made him so good at wielding the weapons of the Durgan. Due to his skill, he was under orders for execution. He, like his father, would be executed and never spoken of again for a crime that never was.

Anyone that was anyone knew that Eric was destined more or less to marry Gwenn Centara. Not that she was the most attractive of those in Eric's age bracket, nor the largest (Durgan Swordsmen liked their wives on the 'country' side, not the 'town skank' side like those who occasionally visited the city), but Gwenn had a charm that Eric would not resist, and she definitely knew how to use her smaller frame in bed for more than what a reasonable man would think it worth.

To marry Gwenn Centara was definitely not 'allowable' under the present command structure, of course, since that would put him (or more appropriately his family name) back inside the reigning circles of power in Durgan, and those in power definitely did not want that. Only by dint of political maneuvering and backstabbing had the Atrebas been removed from power three decades ago; the Caecilius were very reluctant to give that power up, for obvious reasons. The only real aberration to that was Gerard Caecilius, Eric's best friend and the next heir apparent to the Mayor-General slot, wanted nothing more than to play around with mechanical contrivances, and he was the designated next mayor-elect for the city.

The last notable Atrebas had been 'executed' by his best friends when Eric was still in the womb of his mother. He had grown up knowing only the exploits, never the man behind the name Atrebas that was his father. His first name was unspoken in town, due to the blame of a grisly rape-murder that his mother always claimed was staged, never happened. His son would die for a similar reason, political ambition hiding behind a rape charge that should not be.

"Damn my father's political ambitions," Gerard Caecilius swears for not the first and likely not the last time on this trip.

"He's a common rapist. Your father's will has nothing to do with this," the speaker was one of the more prolific Centara, who as was said 'bred like rabbits so that one of them would breed his way into the mayor's house.' It was a not unfair aspersion, however, especially given that most of them were lackluster swordsmen when in the line, only real good when facing someone one-on-one or at backstabbing them.

"Fuck that, Wayn. Eric would no sooner sleep with Giselde than he would castrate himself with a rusty table knife."

"Castrating himself with the rusty knife might be safer, when you get down to it," Gerard says, which drew a chuckle from the prior speaker, Stan Agrippa. Stan was elite, likely the most flexible of the upcoming recruits, even more flexible than Eric, but flexibility and raw skill were two things counted separately in the Legion. Eric had just about anyone in town beat on raw skill, but not battle savvy. He also had some blade tricks that had blown minds when observed in practice.

"Insult not my milk-sister, Gerard. Just because you are Caecilius does not mean I would suffer your treacherous tongue in deference to your life."

"Enough of this. We shall do it here," Gerard says as he stops and looks around. This was as good a place to do it as any, he figured.

"Very well, untie him as is required," Stan says.

"To all Nine Hells with that, Agrippa. We kill him tied up as was required of Edgar," the Centara orders.

"Fuck my father's orders. He committed no crime, he will get his shot at final glory. Not that it will matter much..." Gerard's implication was clear: Eric would not walk away alive. "Untie him. Now."

"Stan, do not do this," the Centara orders as Stan pulls his knife and cuts the knot from the ropes. "Damnit, Stan, he can be the most dangerous of all cadets!"

"This I know," Stan says calmly as he moves back to the line where he was supposed to be. Gerard and Stan occupied the first and third of the rank, the others the second and fourth. "Ready, Gerard?"

"One last time, Stan," Gerard says as he draws his sword at the same time Stan does, though the latter had a reverse grip instead of a proper grip.

"What the..." Eric mutters as he watches the matter unfold. He was expecting them to have to dispatch their duty, and thus dispatch him, but the unfolding action was different from expected.

Gerard, the first of the rank, and Stan, the third, were both right-handed sword swingers, though Stan could use a sword in his off-hand just as easily as in his right. Thus, Gerard had to pivot around to drive his blade into the chest of the Centara, whereas Stan used the reversed blade to simply impale the abdomen of the said political hack. He hit the ground before he even drew his blade.

"Oh foul!" the other warrior, a Minos, drew his blade and charged the prisoner. He knew his life was forfeit, for the Agrippa and Caecilius had not blundered in their strikes. They moved with purpose, but the least he could do was ensure the Atrebas scum was erased from Existence.

What happened next stunned them all into both silence and motionless staring. The sword of the Durgan, the Gladius, was not favored for cutting but could be so used if necessary. Mostly the Gladius was a thrusting weapon, and had a profile to match its deadly purpose. In this case, it was used for cutting against the neck of Eric Atrebas, with a steep angle that would drive down into his neck and shoulder, rendering him dead quickly. Though not the best, the Minos knew his art well enough to be in the Bladesmen. His stroke did not miss his intended target.

All the same, it never contacted his intended target. Eric Atrebas used his hands in such a way that he caught the blade between both with over a foot to spare before it contacted him. A known and feared trait of the Atrebas, the almost paranormal ability to read and intercept strikes aimed at them, Eric used it to routinely win battles and bouts without ever drawing his own sword. And thus the order to execute Eric Atrebas.

Stan finished the battle with a thrust of his sword into the side armor of the Minos. That done, Eric let go of the sword and let it fall to the ground.

"The speed of your hands...rivals that of the servants of Gods," Stan says.

"Indeed," Eric says as he holds up a belt pouch of Stan's personage with a few coins in it.

"What?" Stan checks his waist and finds that pouch not in place. "Arg! And just when I pay you a compliment, you filch my week's earnings faster than you snared that blade!"

"Where I go, I can acquire my own gold," Eric says as he returns it. "Now, for the burial of these two," Eric says as he looks to the fallen real executioners. There was never a question in Eric's mind that Gerard and Stan would let him walk, it was the political hacks that would have been the problem, had Stan and Gerard not done the Centara.

"No. Stan and I shall see to that, we will need plausible timing for it. You will go."

"Then here," Eric says as he hefts the sword of the Minos. "I think he shall have the 'glory' of 'killing me' in the end. The Minos are underestimated and devalued, they deserve a bit of the glory."

"What do you intend with that?" Gerard asks. Within moments, he would regret asking:

"Here," and Eric pulled the sleeve of his tunic up on the left side. "Give me some of the mead you brought, Gerard,"

"Yeah, sure," Gerard says in a bit of a daze. Eric dipped the more-alcohol-than-drink out by hand and slathered one edge of the sword with it. "Wait, what are you—"

"Observe," Eric notes as he drags the sharp edge down his left forearm in a spiral that wound around it from the outside edge inward. As he did it, Stan could tell that Eric was clenching his jaw in severe pain, especially from contact with the drink, but neither said anything until he was done. With the cut in place, he rubbed the flats of the blade down the spiral to give it a blooding, then smeared it around in what appeared to be the pattern of a thrust into someone. "That sack you carry, I need it to bind this slash."

"Here, it's yours anyways," Stan says as he dumps the stuff out on the ground and hands it to Eric.

Eric filched Stan's belt knife and used it to shred open the sack, after which he more or less poured the mead on his arm and then wrapped the sack around it as a tourniquet. With the knife returned, he emptied the last of the mead, a few drops, onto the flat of the blade he had coated in his own blood. "This is what happened: as you gave me my final Glory, I was able to kill off the Centara with his own blade, then knocked you two down temporarily, but I was not able to stop the fourth. As we struggled, I took a mortal wound, then reversed the blade on Minos here and brought him down. As the Minos laid here dying, you gave him the mead for comfort, and some of it was sprinkled on the sword blade, which is why it faintly smells of mead. You then placed all three in one grave and torched the bodies, then buried them over."

"And what shall you do?" Stan asks.

"I will walk," Eric says as he claims his sword from the stack of stuff that had been loosed from the sack. "By tomorrow, I will be somewhere else, and only the eyes of my comrades and my love shall be my memories of Durgan. I will never forget what I have learned, or who I called comrade." He had also picked up and pocketed the remainder of the gear and rations they had brought, as necessary to his journey. The one thing he was lacking was a bow, which was something he was generally proficient at but had not on hand.

"And though we may never speak your name publicly, we shall never forget the true you, Eric Atrebas. May the Gods shine on your quest for a new life." Gerard and Eric traded the traditional shoulder-clap of true friends.

"Stan, I have one request of you, if you are still unattached, that is."

The phrasing made it grossly evident his intention: "Gwenn."

"Indeed. If she bears a child not of your sire, claim and raise him or her as your own. I am the second generation betrayed by the powers of our Legion, do not allow this mistake to repeat again."

"It shall be done, Eric."

"Listen, Eric, I will make it a point to visit the town of Gelde once every year on this same day. I will remain for three days, then return home. If you ever wish to catch up on old times, do seek me out," Gerard requests. Gelde was the opposite direction from which Eric intended on heading initially, but not impossible for Eric to get to when one considered that the maximum hunting radius of Durgan was little more than twenty miles around it, and the farming radius far smaller than that. Durgan mostly subsisted by providing mercenaries, truly professional and disciplined soldiers, to neighboring city-states for a fee. That fee was often used for purchasing foodstuffs and equipment not manufactured locally.

"Do not, Gerard. I intend on never stopping my journey through life, until the day that I die climbing some strange mountain somewhere with a name we cannot speak. If ever I shall return to speak of times long past, I will do so by walking through the front gate of Durgan and tracking you down the hard way. At that time, I expect I shall have mastered the arts of war from all over, and I shall demonstrate if you wish."

"I would love to see how the rest of Existence fights," Gerald and Stan both say at the same time, in the same fashion.

"Then you can rest assured I shall return someday," Eric says. With a formal bow, Eric was turned and on his way down the road that few Durgan warriors had ever crossed, and even less of those who had returned to tell tales of what was found down that road.

-x-x-x-

As the night dragged afresh, Eric had used a digging tool to dig himself a depression under the ground level, which was a good first step to protecting one from the elements and ready detection from enemies, be they man or beast. A weave of branches combined with a covering of fall leaves smoothed out over an area blended the hide into the surrounding area, thereby preventing easy spotting or access to it.

His day had been not wasted, really. It had taken Eric no more than four hours march to get to a town, a small one nonetheless. Despite not being in armor or ceremonial dress, Eric had immediately been pegged as a Durgan Bladesman and was honored for it; he was charged nothing for food and shelter for the night, though he did purchase a bow and received some victuals for the day. He opted not to partake of the warm houses and even the offered pleasurable company, seeking to make haste lest a passing company of Durgan Bladesmen be alerted to his presence by the townspeople. With profuse thanks to the townspeople, he had continued onward toward the larger city-state of Gelles, and from there likely into lands that those of his people would call barbarian, though Eric figured they no more barbarian than he.

Eric marched as he had for thousands of positions of the sun and moon before, marched for hours down the dust road leading to Gelles in the distance. He marched until the path became hard to discern in the moonlight, at which point he stopped to dig his hide-shelter. The marching was less than entertaining to Eric, whose mind was more active now than it had ever been, with the exception of those few times he was alone with Gwenn. Those few times he had been alone with her and in good company, memories of those nights and the company she gave him, were one of the few things that gave him heart like few other things. The knowledge that he would never return to her company, likely, hurt him at several levels. The pain gave him motivation to move away, lest he succumb to the foolish desire to return and thus condemn himself and two honorable comrades to assured execution.

His mind stirred like nothing else as he bellied in the hide, resting his head on a leather sack he had bartered for in town. He felt more than knew he was heading for great and terrible things in the future to come, the future he would forge hereafter as a wanderer instead of in the line at Durgan. Eric could sense that there was more to life, more to Existence than he could reach by his feet alone, yet such puzzled him: if not by foot, sail, or caravan, then how was he to reach it? He considered that even if Man could fly high, there had to be a limit to the sky; it was often said that the air one breathes becomes thinner the higher one goes up a mountain, thus the air would run out to keep a man breathing while flying, would it not?

The other thing he knew intrinsically was that the world around him was his new home, and alternately not his home. It was his challenge ground. It would be where he truly learned of life and the living, not just the arts of war as he had promised. He intended on mastering war, indeed, but not to the exclusion of all else in life, for there was much more to the world than just fighting the occupants of the world. That more than else gave Eric the courage to walk away, knowing that he would learn while the remainder of Durgan stagnated. And Eric swore to himself that he would see as much of it he could muster himself to explore.

In due time his body overrode his mind and he was asleep. His dreams that night were sharp and clear, both dreams of the last night he spent in the company of Gwenn and dreams of some indeterminable event whereby the main color of the evens he was witness to was blue, a blue both more luminescent and darker than the skies at morning's rise. Of the latter he felt the most restless, as if his body instinctively knew it was somehow connected to a battle; of the former, he was restless but of a fashion that was pleasurable like few others.

The night continued onward; Eric's dreams gravitated from ones that he could understand in the morning to ones that he could not. When he did finally awaken, the displaced warrior of Durgan remembered most of his dreaming for once in his life, and for most he was surprised that he continued sleeping straight through. Most of his dreams were quite bloody in content, though some were not. In terms of portent, Eric wondered if that meant he was destined for battlefields even he did not understand at the time?

With the waking came the realization that he had slept clear through dawn, which was very unusual for him given that he was almost always awake before his training unit's role call time. Despite the late start, finding motivation to get on with the day was not difficult for the former Bladesman, as the road was now clearly visible and the day seemed to welcome the travels by continuing to be only partially clouded. After a breakfast of rations and some wild berries he had found the day prior, he was moving once again toward Gelles.

Five hours Eric marched, stopping twice for breaks at a river that was running relatively alongside the road he followed. That was one lucky break he figured, having a ready supply of drinkable water nearby the path he traversed. After a few minutes of rest, he was back on the path and continued the veritable march toward the future, never sure what path he would cross next, yet never really unsure as to whether or not he would cross it. He passed a bit of traffic headed in the opposite direction, those few traveling merchants and related personnel taking little notice of him or action toward him, and more to the better in Eric's opinion, since stealth was now an ally more than anything else: being unknown would win him more than being known and honored.

Well past midday and approaching evening meal, Eric came to a lone house that was mere feet off the road, and approached. The construction was typical, a circular house with straw thatch roof and caulked stonework for walls. "Is anyone present?" Eric called out from slightly beside the door, since common wisdom held that you never stand completely in front of an unknown structure's door. After a minute, there was no answer, so Eric brushed aside the rug and entered, his right hand on the handle of his gladius in case. The structure turned out to be empty, abandoned and likely looted, given the state of disrepute of the structure inside. With no answer and no cause to remain, Eric simply left the structure and continued onward toward Gelles.

Another hour Eric marched down the path, until he came to a similar but larger house of the same type that he had just verified. This one appeared to be two houses of stonework that had been merged into one, and had an auxiliary building to the side and behind it. Before he could even request a check to see if anyone was inside, the matter became infinitely clear as a guy came veritably flying out of the door and landed on the dusty path from the main road to his house, a fatal sword wound to the stomach. He wretched for a few moments, convulsed severely, and stopped moving; Eric had seen others die in such a slower-than-nominal fashion, though Durgan soldiers were trained to kill cleanly and efficiently, preventing such inhumanity.

His lady came out of the house moments thereafter, dropped to her knees, and cradled the dead body to her breast, sobbing. Moments thereafter, two barbarians came out of the house with drawn and bloodied blades; on seeing the state of both their weapons, Eric took a closer look at the lady and noticed that she had tasted their steel, seeing as she had a long but shallow cut down the left side of her body. The enemy that had done the slicing on the lady had a rag that he used to clean his weapon, which gave Eric some ideas as to how to go about eliminating both.

"And who are you, knave?" One of them asks.

Eric's only response was to pull his sword and immediately take guard. As the enemy took guard themselves, Eric began circling left, preparing to isolate the one that had killed the man and take him down first, since Eric knew his options for defense against a blood-slicked blade were rather minimal.

The enemy obliged his plan, apparently not realizing it. Eric was physically a middle-of-the-road Durgan Bladesman, not the strongest in his unit but easily the most dexterous. Given either case he had the barbarians he was facing beat in both speed and strength, without knowing it. As the first of the enemies swung at him to the sound of the lady's sobbing, Eric deflected the sword strike aside with his own sword and pressed his attack, aiming his sword for the center of the open tunic on the enemy. Contact; the gladius drove in under the enemy sternum and literally passed out through his back between two ribs. In so doing, Eric rotated around the falling enemy while roughly hauling out his bloodied blade; the swing of his own blade in such an endeavor had peppered both the lady and the remaining enemy with the blood of the fallen.

The enemy knew he was outmatched, seeing his comrade fall in such a grossly easy strike from this unknown foe with the short sword, but his sense of honor dictated that he try or die, no fleeing allowed. He tried a thrust of the longer sword, which Eric easily drove aside and shouldered the man away from him. As both reset from their actions, this time the enemy made one major mistake, which was what Eric was hoping to see the enemy do at least once. The barbarian's broadsword came up and down, headed for Eric's left shoulder and attached hand that was holding no blade. Eric made no effort to dodge; as the blade passed a predetermined point his hand shot up to meet it, and with three fingers he captured the blade about halfway down the edge and arrested its motion.

The shock of having a sword blade in his own hand caught by an unknown warrior was more than ample to stun the Barbarian breathless, speechless, and motionless. It was not as bad with the three comrades from Durgan, since they had seen this skill of Eric's in operation more than once; he had won sparring matches solely on dint of disarming his foes in the weeks prior to his 'execution'. In this case, it was Eric who retained possession of the sword as his gladius came around and down, the razor-sharp blade cleaving through the tunic and into the enemy's shoulder, stopped only after the former Durgan Bladesman had chopped a full foot downward into his body. The last sound he made as he was conscious was only the sound of his dying body hitting the ground. Moments later, the shock of the wound knocked him unconscious, never to awaken again.

"You, lady, how bad is that wound?" Eric asks as he cleans off his sword.

"What? What about my husband?" She asks.

"There is little I can do for him, short of a proper burial. I can do something for your wound, unless you want to live crippled for the rest of your life, or worse, die of disease from that cut?" His sword properly cleaned, Eric sighed and sheathed it.

"What? Why? Why can't you help him?" She asks, clearly approaching hysterical.

"He is already dead. For that I can do nothing. Decide, now, if you want me to see to that cut on your side or not," Eric orders rather tersely.

"No! I want you to help him!" She shouts, sobbing.

"Then I truly can do nothing for you," Eric notes as he walks up to the second of the barbarians he had slain. With a little work he had removed the sword belt and put it on above his Gladius belt. With a few more checks, he came up with some gold and some other traveller's equipment, material which he already had from building his own kit over the past days. "If you survive the coming days, I suggest you sell off the remaining gear of these two men, and move somewhere where there are others in the area to help protect you." Eric had picked up the sword of the barbarian and sheathed it, it was an acceptable broadsword but not really a stellar one; the one they trained against in Durgan was actually far better crafted and maintained. Still, it was better to have more than one form of offense available, and with the addition of a sword as well as a bow, Eric would be able to provide a more mixed challenge to any threat given that his combat style accounted for just about any weapon out there.

Eric had begun walking toward the road to continue his march. "You're...leaving me?" She asks in almost a gasp.

"You do not want my help and I have a journey to continue." _More like aimless wandering_, Eric rebukes himself silently after a moment. "I see no reason to stay here."

"You...really...can't help him?" The bent of her comment and look indicated her late husband.

"No."

"Then...can you help me bury him?" she asks after a moment.

"You cannot bury him with that cut in your side, you will only cause more injury to yourself. That wound needs to be tended to, and I will bury him."

-x-x-x-

It had been three days before Eric had left the lady's house; it was that long before she could move properly again courtesy of that cut she had received. The three days of respite from traveling and the taste of proper house life was a stark contrast from his tenure in the Legion, and he had to admit that it was not as unpleasant as it would seem when looking upon it from the position of a line Bladesmen. Still and all, Eric was not ready to give up on the memory of Gwenn, despite the lady's entreats to remain with her. On the third day, a Merchant's convoy had stopped at the house, and between her and the other ladies of the convoy Eric was able to secure her a position helping their fledgling business trade route in such a fashion that she was not to be a prostitute. She was also able to sell off the gear from the barbarians, as well as a few of the valuables of her household, the rest she took along with her as collateral to help in her new life. It went without saying that she was ill-suited to living on her own, she had little personal training in that fashion and likely would be rolled the first time someone tried her.

Eric had decided to move with the convoy as a temporary guard for their movement, since barbarians were apparently thick in this area and Eric had put paid to two of them with little to no challenge. His skills went spoken of but untested for two days, and on the third day they had arrived at a small city, Hartford.

"You're not continuing with us to Gelles?" The Caravan Master asks.

"I may be going that way, though not right now," Eric replies. "For now, I will see what is in the area of this town."

"Then be wary, traveler, for there are many thieves and ruffians in a town like this."

"I am versed in such ways. I shall be careful," Eric replies with a stiff nod. "Good fortune, comrade," Eric says as he turned to leave.

Eric picked a direction to walk and began at it, desiring nothing more than to see first what the city had to offer before he made fair to sell off some of the gear he salvaged from the two barbarians. The lady to which he had aided was willing to part with the gear and coin from the barbarians, since her household had enough to get her by for now, though she did admit that she would have to watch her actions and her purse strings for the time being, until she found more stable work.

They had called this a small city, but in essence it was larger than Durgan and its two nearest notable neighbors. More to the point, the whole city was a sharp contrast from the military bastion that Eric had grown up in and sworn to defend to the death. People moved freely, aimlessly, not as they did in Durgan on the shortest route to a definite objective. The town center was mostly merchant's stalls crowded with vendors and consumers; such persons were a rare sight in Durgan, given that the only true merchants were those that came by on caravan. As Eric milled his way through the crowd, which he noticed now included the merchants he had traveled with, he found that people kept a respectable distance from him, due to the swords he carried and the bow that was hung over and secured to his backpack almost as an afterthought.

Eric found himself accosted by merchant after merchant, requesting he buy their wares. Naturally Eric ignored most, as his purpose for now was to observe, not purchase. Observe, he did no shortage of; there were ladies in between the stalls of the merchants that would do naught but catch the eye. Still, of their wiles he did not partake, since he was already experienced in such matters and he did not have the addiction to the touch of a lady that others had; his thoughts of his last love in Durgan were more than enough for that purpose. Of the remainder he observed and purchased a quantity of keepable rations to take along with him on the next legs of his travel, and a quantity of arrows to match the bow he carried.

All in all, Eric estimated the amount of civilians in this town at or around twelve thousand, maybe slightly more. Far larger than the lands of the Durgan Legion.

A hand had entered Eric's pocket, though the pickpocket was not a really veteran thief and Eric immediately recognized the action. As the hand exited his pocket Eric stepped back and rotated in on the thief, seizing his hand in a trained grip that caused the pickpocket—hardly half Eric's age and female to boot—to yelp in pain as he forced her around and down, facing away from him while her hand was holding his gold pouch. This he reclaimed with his free left, then applied his boot to her rear in a pushing motion that sent her across the lane and into a pile of ornate rugs. In moments she was on her feet, clearly incensed that she had been treated so; "You...knave!" she half-shouts.

"Did you fail to notice the swords, child? Or did you think they were of no concern?" Eric says as he lightly tosses his gold pouch up and down.

"People don't kick other people around here!" she shouts, clearly not drawing attention to how she had earned such a strike.

"They do from where I hail, especially to those caught in your trade. Consider yourself lucky: that is the lesser of such reactions," Eric replies coldly, then decides to relent, given that he did not need the money with proper rations now. The gold bag (which was rather light to begin with) sails across the way to her and lands at the child's feet. "Keep it. Were it not for my reactions, you would have gotten away clean. Begone with you," Eric waves in a dismissive fashion, which she accepts readily. The bag was off the ground and the little kid had dashed into the crowd shortly thereafter.

Eric continued his walking, seeing plenty, speaking to a few otherwise inquisitive civilians and a band of the local watch, though not one of them questioned his origin. Eric figured that fairly obvious; he was close enough to Durgan that they likely recognized his sword for what it was: the primary and feared killing tool of the Durgan.

In due time he noticed another thing markedly absent in the walls of Durgan: prostitutes, otherwise known as streetwalkers or ladies of the night, though at this time it was still mid-day. It was rather creepy to Eric to himself be propositioned, or to be offered a 'fun time tonight,' though he always declined, seeking no such entertainment this early in his travels. As he considered it, he figured he would likely not need such entertainment at all, given that enough of a challenge from day to day (and enough solitude) would forestall such a requirement. In the end, he made more than a few prostitutes rather unhappy that day before the proverbial blade was drawn.

"You no want, soldier-boy?" the lady says as she runs her right index finger down the inside of her left breast, a move calculated to fire Eric up. Of course, he was buying it less than the last dozen to ask.

"No, but thank you for the offer," Eric says cordially and then continues walking.

He made it four steps before he was accosted. "Hey! You be the man with the swords that booted my daughter for stealing, aren't you?"

"Your daughter? This tall, brown hair, blue eyes?" Eric asks, demonstrating how tall with a hand held off the ground.

"Yes, that be her," the otherwise nondescript guy says. "I believe this is yours; no telling how much she spent of it, feels kind of light," before Eric could protest, the money bag was thrust into his hand.

"Actually, it appears to have gained weight. Perchance she moved to another area to continue her day's work?" Eric wonders aloud.

"Blast her! I have told her time and again not to be doing so—huh?" he asks as Eric returns the bag to his hand. "What is this? It is yours!"

"I gave it to her at the conclusion of the incident," Eric notes. "Please return it to her, and with the advice that it be wise for her to pick only from those who are otherwise distracted, not from a guy walking down the street."

"What is this?" he asks again.

"You cannot tell?" Eric asks with a tone of amusement. "I hold nothing against thieves, even those whom I catch. Such is excellent training for alternate skills, such as espionage and covert strikes."

"What the nine hells are you? A soldier of Durgan or something?"

"I am," Eric replies deadpan, going on the old creed that once you are Durgan, even in death you are Durgan. "See not the wrong, especially if she plies her trade against those who are corrupted with power. If she steals not from the honest, the hard workers, then she is doing the world a service. So long as her own power does not corrupt her, she has earned it."

"You are bloody insane," the man replies. "I would never encourage her to steal from anyone!"

"If you cannot curb the tendency, then channel it to a needed purpose. There are some in life who cannot go without attempting to steal; one of my best friends was one such person. If you cannot stop it, use it for the right reason. Good day, sir," Eric says as he continues walking. Eric did not mention that he had the fastest hands in the Durgan Legion two years running, and this not simply in the art of catching a moving blade.

"Bloody insane," the guy mutters as he keeps walking. It was not that he did not see a level of logic in what Eric said, it was that he believed that his daughter need be doing no such thing.

Again, Eric made it only four steps before he was accosted again. This time not for a civil reason.

"Hey, brigand! You too good for my ladies?" Someone asks loudly. Eric figured it aimed at someone else, and ignored. "Hey! Look at someone when they are talking to you!"

Eric found himself roughly spun around to face the person that had shouted at him. "Look, brigand, what is your problem?" The ruffian that had done so asks. He was in the company of three other 'hired muscle' types and one guy that struck Eric as very poorly dressed for combat, but very well dressed to draw attention to himself. All had swords, and one had a stick.

"I have less problems than you, apparently," Eric replies calmly. "Now, what is the issue?"

"I asked if you think you are too good for my ladies," their pimp asks in a dangerous tone.

"I have no desire to sleep with anyone right now. If you will excuse me," Eric says as he removes the hand from his upper left arm and slings it aside. In a moment he was walking again, more or less toward the north gates of the city.

"Your ladies are too good for him, boss, they scared that weakling off," someone behind him replies to Eric's veiled dismissal of their whole group.

A sword was drawn, a sound that Eric could recognize for no other, having heard it thousands of times a day for the duration of his known life. "Brigand scum! I did not excuse you! Turn and face me!"

"As you seek, so shall I provide," Eric replies. With his right hand he drew the first of his newer broadswords, which he immediately transferred to his left hand. A moment later the second sword was pulled and he was readied.

"What the hell is this?" One of the ruffians in his employ asks as he pulls a broadsword similar to the ones that Eric carried.

"I've seen that stance before...he's a damned Durgan Bladesman!" one of their ranks shouts.

"Oh yes," Eric replies. "I am Durgan, and forever shall be, scumdog." Eric says.

"You...Durgan? Ha!" the foppish dandy, their leader, says as he tries lunging between Eric's swords to impale him. Eric proved his claim right as he shifted right, used his left sword to drive the thrust outside, followed by a gut kick that doubled the enemy over. That accomplished, his sword flashed upwards in the after-midday light and severed his head cleanly.

"Did...any of you's see that right?" A third of the four ruffians asks.

"No, didn't," the largest of their ranks notes.

"I ain't playing with this shit," one of them says.

"Then start walking," Eric orders as he rips one of the frills off the downed foe's tunic and uses it to clean his sword.

"Right," another of them says. Not one stood around after Eric had thoroughly and rapidly eliminated their boss, who was also their best with a sword.

It was not long before the City Guard came along and questioned Eric over the matter, given that a hysterical lady had run off after watching the draw of blades, though she had claimed that The Pimp was going to murder a bystander. When they found The Pimp headless and a guy never before seen in town lording over the dead body, using one of his flamboyant ruffles to clean his sword, they were rightly confused. Until one of them saw the sword of the Durgan Legion on his right hip, across from two broadswords on his left hip.

"What started this matter?" the Guard Lieutenant asks.

"I did not sleep with one of his ladies when she asked, so he got heated and decided to draw blade. He thrust in, I drove it outside, kicked him in the waist, and removed his head with an upswing," Eric replies.

"And his guards?" the same officer asks.

"If you find his ruffians, they would say something similar, though one of them said they did not see the happening clearly."

"You scared them off, sounds like," one of the guards says.

"They seemed ill interested in perpetuating the fight," Eric notes with a hint of amusement.

"You scared them off, Durgan," the Lieutenant says. "Any of his personal effects you wish to maintain?"

"If he has gold, please, I think such riches are more due to his stable of ladies than his dead carcass." His prolific gold pouch was tossed to Eric. "Where to his headquarters?"

"That building," and one of the guards points. Eric started walking, determined of purpose and not about to stray from it, including sleeping with the staff of that building, despite their entreats.

-x-x-x-

Another week, another city, and still not his destination. This one differed in that it was a major merchant hub of apparently several different areas of the world. Eric found himself rather bewildered by the differing styles of weapons from his own arsenal, though he had little issue imagining what the purpose of those arms really were and how to go about using them. In this, Eric never realized that his wish to not fight as much as possible, though humane, was going against his best talents and preconditioning.

The first thing he sought out, of course, was a decent inn to get a meal. No trouble, that. Finding one that served a decent meal was another story; Eric trusted few person's cooking, regardless of gender. Thus, he settled on a local stew that did not seem like rat poison and contented himself to the rather steep price asked. The brigands that had assailed him two days prior would rest better that their money was paying for a meal and not a prostitute, Eric was sure.

After the meal, Eric went out in search of someone who would be willing to purchase the gear he just picked up. One of the brigands had a larger pack than Eric was normally used to carrying, which he surmised was typically used to carry the bounty of their raids, and which had some small valuables that he sold off as spoils of the battle, as well as their weapons which always fetched an excellent price.

After Eric sold the last of the greek-style shields that he was not keeping to a vendor of shields, he began his seeking of new and interesting weapons to add to his collection of 1 bow, 2 broadswords, four knives, and Durgan Gladius. More than a few vendors had asked if he was willing to part with it, though his answer was always the same: not happening. In the end, he ended up purchasing nothing, given that the weapons were nice but nothing really more necessary than what he already held.

Another night at an inn, and Eric was up with the sunrise to head off into another day for another town. A day he marched past lonely farmhouses, choosing a bank of trees to settle in for the night in the same fashion he always did when out of a town: in a hide, sword ready and available to eliminate anything, man or woman or beast, that assailed him at night. The next morning saw a breakfast of hard tack and dried beef, supplemented with a few redfruits from a tree not twenty yards from his hide. Shortly thereafter he was back on the road and continuing northeast toward his eventual destination.

Eric marched until the sun was significantly upwards, almost merciless in the temperatures it was bringing down upon him. In this he passed a farming village, of which nobody went out of their way to disturb or even question him, though the town's children followed him from one edge to the next asking him questions, and afterwards he kept going unhindered. He continued on after a quick meal in the shade of an old tree, and began looking for a place to set up a hide before the sun went down.

Before he could find a suitable grove of trees and such, he found himself confronted with something that he never even thought was possible.

"I told you I didn't do anything!" a younger lady shouts.

"Shut up, witch, we're not listening." the sound was on the side to the right of the lake that Eric had stopped at for a drink and was considering making a hide in the area of this body of water. "Here!"

"Aieee!" The sound of the splash carried long, and directed Eric to the offending party. Six were watching as a lady splashed around in the lake, presumably tossed in by one of their ranks. Their range was fifty yards, hardly a tough shot for someone with Eric's training in bow.

**Twang**, the first shot was loosed, and **thunk**, chest shot that Eric could see had struck perfectly to penetrate his heart. The first indicator that something was wrong to his allies was his dying body hitting the ground.

"Oh shit!" Someone at the far side shouts as they begin moving left to right, trying to circle around an outcropping of the lake and get to him.

"Now that makes me feel all warm and happy," Eric mutters as he sights up their leading runner and gives him a movement lead appropriate to the bow. The shot struck the enemy in the arm and penetrated, simply pinning his right arm to his chest while puncturing a lung. He went down after another three paces while Eric nocked a third arrow.

"This knave is good!" Someone shouts before Eric looses round three. This arrow missed hitting one of the enemies in the leg by expedient of him stopping quickly on recognizing the shot, though Eric did not give them time, he had a fourth shot loosed and going very quickly. This one struck an arm and penetrated through the muscle, rendering it and the sword in that hand unusable.

"How do you like being at the mercy of another?" Eric asks in sharp anger as his fifth shot is loosed. This one struck one of the enemy in the cheek and sailed clear through his head, causing him to fall onto one of the other that was just now rounding the bend and readying to charge Eric down. The bow went aside, the shield came up, and Eric drew his Gladius to bring the fight to their face.

"DIE!" One of the brigands shouts as he charges Eric down, shield set and sword held high. At the last moment Eric counter-charged with his shield, the collision was enough to stun the enemy in his tracks and render him unable to swing temporarily. Eric drove in again with his shield, this collision forcing the enemy off balance and stunning him even farther.

The enemy with the arrow in forearm tried Eric's right with a knife, and found his left-hand skill inadequate to the task. A quick flick of Eric's Gladius kept the enemy dagger out of danger, and a thrust against the enemy right resulted in a puncture between two ribs. The enemy fell to both knees immediately while clutching the wound and breathing roughly. This done, Eric drove in again on the foe with the shield, though this time Eric intended on getting his sword around the left edge of the shield and stabbing inward several times.

Eric had to break his attack off before he could execute, as the third of the enemy had tried flanking him on the left with the same intent as he. It did not work, though, as Eric's shield was easily capable to blocking the broadsword that came in on a vicious spree of four swings. A boot to the shield in front of him kept that enemy still off balance, and he was able to expertly parry the slash of the sword aimed at him from the left, with the inertia of the enemy attack forcing the enemy to a point where they were stacked one in front of the other in front of Eric. This ineptitude gave Eric the advantage, as only one could attack him temporarily, and he intended on capitalizing on it. Shield up, Eric drove in against the barbarian with the broadsword, and drove through his counter-swing with little hesitation. This caused a collision between the three, which neatly sandwiched the one without the shield between two shields.

Before anyone could react and change the status of the battle, Eric had rammed the blade of the gladius halfway through the enemy chest, causing him to fall backwards as the two shields clashed again, though this time the enemy was ready for Eric. The former Durgan warrior saw the flash of the blade and knew he would take a hit; his shield was not as tall as normal and he could not maneuver it fast enough. The enemy blade came in and slashed his left bicep an inch below his shoulder, having passed just above the rim of his shield. The cut was extremely painful, enough so that his shield was harder to properly control.

"Aha! The knave bleeds red!" the enemy shouts as he paces backwards, having noticed the blood on the blade of his sword.

"All men bleed red. Those who face the warriors of Durgan will find this out the hard way."

"Durgan? You? Faugh!" his stance and shield became far more conservative, and Eric knew that this warrior had seen or heard the warriors of Durgan in action. Few could muster the skill necessary to call themselves the better of a Durgan Bladesman, and most knew it.

Eric used the mental lapse of the enemy to move. Before the enemy could recover his composure and continue the battle, Eric had rotated around his left and gone in, hard, with the gladius set to impale. Eric contacted with his blade as the enemy brought his sword around in a rendition of what Eric had tried, though the sword only grazed the ex-Durgan in the side, not a serious wound but long and shallow. The last of their ranks collapsed to the ground, the only one of five to injure the Durgan, and paid for his success with his life in a matter of moments. On the other hand, Eric was bleeding from more than one cut, and one of those quite rapidly bleeding.

The thrashing in the water and a cry for help from the lady was more than ample to break Eric of any reverie pertaining to his victory. Without much in the way of thinking about it, he began running for the far shore where she had been thrown in, dropping aside his shield and gearpack to loose weight and unceremoniously threw his gladius into the ground so as to not have to sheath it bloodied. As he approached, a walking stick carried by the one he had shot in the head was claimed, since the lady appeared to be drifting away from the immediate area of the shore.

"Help! Please!" She entreats between gasps of air and spasmodic fits of struggling against the water. Durgan soldiers were stranger to water in general, the most water action any got was a run through the falls north of Durgan, and that rare. Still, Eric waded in to the shallows off the edge of the lake all the way to his hips and extended the stick to her, which had more than enough reach that she could get both hands on it. By securing the end of the stick in his belt and hauling it upwards with only his right arm, Eric was able to literally haul the lady clear of the waves to the point that she was hanging from the stick with only her feet dragging in the water. With a simple twist of his upper body, she was deposited, sputtering and choking and completely drenched, on the shore.

"Are you all right, lady?" Eric asks, and all he got in response was another coughing fit. "I take that as a 'yes'."

The stick dropped aside and back to shore, Eric made for his dropped equipment. Before he could even take five paces, he fell dizzy and collapsed, the loss of blood and exertion of battle too much even for the Durgan expatriate.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

For those of you who are used to the exploits of the Jokers Wild, this story is likely a dose of shell-shock to you. Even I will readily admit that the trajectory is about as clear as mud when you get down to it, but rest assured that this 'monster' is going somewhere logical. I think I should start off by clarifying one thing here: this is the precursor to the Jokers Wild, and a lengthy one at that. Wholly six sets of this story will run before the first set of the Jokers Wild series, if you consider the chronological order of the story timeline. The seventh set wraps up the combined stories way distant in the future.

For those of you new to the MMC and JW series, welcome and thank you for joining this magical mystery tour, the ride is only beginning. I issue the same warning to you as I do the other readers: expect a lot of blood between now and the end of it. As if this chapter wasn't ample forewarning on that subject...

To both the new and the old, I pass unto you one request: if you read it, review it. And make sure you hammer me on points that don't make sense to you, or you think I screwed up somewhere. I expect and welcome the feedback, for good reason.

Not much else to say on this opening chapter, so...

NEXT UP: Maybe those guys Eric took out during the witch-testing weren't wrong after all; the former Durgan Bladesman goes a good way to cementing his hometown's reputation for efficient and deadly soldiery as a mercenary bodyguard for some shady business, while learning more of the small world he now explores.

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Review Replies:

No reviews yet. I WANT TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS, PEOPLE! If I can do better, I want to know how.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet:

A long list of them found and highlighted by my beta-reader, **Necroblade**. Much thanks to said overworked and seriously underpaid meister of corrections and logic :)

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Footnotes:

None for this chapter.

* * *

Included Elements:

**IRL**:

—Greek History: Durgan training is somewhat based on the practices of Sparta, though not to their extent in others. Unlike Spartans, however, Durgan soldiers train to fight both long-range and short-range, and train to handle many different types of weapons, not just a few, making them more efficient as mercenaries rather than stand-up infantry forces.

—Ancient History Mashup: Durgan is a mercenary take on Greek concepts (a military city-state, anyone?) and Roman concepts, such as weapons (tower shield and Gladius).

—Modern Sniper Training: Eric Atrebas' method of concealing himself below ground level and covered in local foliage is called a _Hide_ by modern Snipers. Done right, a Sniper can conceal himself or herself in a hide and watch any amount of enemy troops march by with nobody the wiser (unless they use IR equipment, in which case the sniper is screwed).

—Medieval Practices: The premise used to test the 'witch' for witchcraft is a logic trap of its own: if she floats, she is obviously a witch and needs to be burned, if she sinks, she is not a witch but dead nonetheless. Nobody accused those pukes of having common sense, eh? It should be known that while there is little evidence that such practices existed before the Bible was written, it stands to reason someone would have an ax to grind on the subject.

—The Pimp: All evidence points to the fact that they existed back then, as well, though to what measure they were flamboyant like that, I have no clue. Extrapolation on my part, though it stands to reason someone in such a 'rough' trade would have bodyguards of his own, and some would be more or less flamboyant than others.

—Foul language: Such words were used that far back, they are not recent inventions.

**Generic RPG**:

—the quest to learn more about the world. You can probably guess this is not going to end well for the adventurer, no?

—the towns and townspeople

—Barbarians!

—The merchant convoy. I don't have evidence they existed or did not exist, but the premise is a bit interesting.

**Anime**:

—Jubei-Chan: Eric's defensive technique, the ability to capture weapons and arrest their momentum, matches Jubei / Jiyu and their defensive technique. This bears special mention, as I developed the premise of this defensive technique some time prior to 2000, and only saw the said anime in 2008.

**Computer Game**:

—Mechwarrior 3: Strangely enough, there is a tie here to Mechwarrior 3: 'The military city of Durgan', to quote your support mechanic from said game. Durgan was a supply routing point in said game, here it is a military town that sends out units of its military as mercenary forces with a reputation for taking the enemy down hard.


	2. Understanding

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 02: Understanding)

Unlike normal, where Eric could instantly tell he was awake as opposed to asleep, he could not tell when or even if he was really awake as opposed to not.

"I still think helping him in any fashion was a mistake," his mind barely recognized.

"I think it only civil of Miri to do so," and Eric was conscious enough to recognize this was a different voice. It was here that Eric realized that he was actually awake and hearing, not dealing with a dream. Of dremas he had suffered multiple, including several in which he had apparently been seriously wounded in fashion he did not really recognize. Odd, that, apparently that the hidden reaches of his mind enjoyed dealing such damage on him...

"I agree, regardless of what he is he still saved one of us. That much should be repaid, always." This was a third voice, authoritative but not all that old, in Eric's estimate.

"He will bring nothing but trouble by his presence," and the repeat of the first voice sounded like an elderly lady. Eric had little trouble keeping his eyes closed and his body stilled, that he maintain the appearance of being asleep despite being awake. There was more than one way to gather information, and deception was often a more effective one, Eric knew.

"Why? What do you know of him? Do you know he would readily sell us out? Do you know that he would show animosity to our order?" Eric could tell this voice was young—like twenty younger—and very passionate.

"We can trust nobody, Miri. _Nobody_. I say this because it only takes one person to give out this location and we are all dead. Nobody will tolerate our ways, any more than we should tolerate the presence of this stranger." Again, this elderly lady's voice was unmistakable in the building he was in. Eric could sense enough of his surroundings to know he was near or against an exterior wall, on a fairly soft cot, and in a fairly small enclosed space with no or an open door leading to a larger room.

"Surely not every person on this planet can be hateful to our order," this was a repeat of the more authoritative middle-aged lady. Eric considered it rather odd that the only voices he had heard thus far were female, no man had spoken at all. "Our skills are not for harming others. Why would anyone be inclined to hate us for having a separate set of skills that are hard and time-consuming to train for?"

_Fear of the unknown, perchance_? Eric answers her question inside the confines of his mind, though he actively wondered what their answer would be.

"The traveler is right, fear of the unknown would likely be the reason for any such hatred." This was a prior unheard voice, and closer to him than others. Again a lady, and at a guess she was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.

_How the hell? I said nothing, I only thought it—a mind reader_, Eric immediately realizes, recalling tales of such persons that fileted through town from time to time. Durgan had no such persons among the populous, at least no such persons that spoke of such talents, and Eric considered it to be more the pity. There had to be serious advantages to being able to read minds.

"He is awake?" The shrill question was from the eldest of the ladies.

"I am," Eric replies audibly. "For what value it has, I know not enough of your group to write ten lines, much less be a hazard to it. Furthermore, why would I want to give away this location? You have shown me more courtesy than my homeland of late, I have no reason to knife your backs."

Even without looking, Eric could sense the approach of one of the ladies. Her movements were light, graceful, not the heavy or leaden steps of the typical lady around Durgan. "How do you feel, traveler?" The voice was that of the youngest of the persons that he had heard prior.

"Well enough, I daresay," Eric replies. "I cannot feel any of my injuries. A numbing agent?"

"No, your injuries are healed."

"Do not tell him how, Miri," the elder lady orders tersely.

"Milady?" she asks, apparently towards the door.

"I will allow it, but do bring him out of your quarters for the telling. You may stop simulating sleep or injury, traveler, I know you are in better condition than you appear," this voice was very authoritative, and Eric had little doubt she was somewhere between thirty and five years greater. "Close you are, thirty-seven."

"This shall get us all torched at the stake," the elder lady says as Eric leans up to dismount the bed.

Eric could tell that his body still felt stiff from the battle and the continual travel, but not to the extent that he expected. More to the point, he felt more or less uninjured, despite the several cuts and possibly a sprained ankle from the battle. "How long was I out?" Eric asks as he actually looks to the person in the room. It only took him a half-second to realize it was the lady he had fished out of the lake. When not drenched and sputtering he could tell that she was amazingly beautiful, more so than the lady he left behind in Durgan.

"A little less than a full day," she says as Eric rises from the cot. "Your clothes are on the wall, I cleaned most of the blood out. Amazing how much of their blood you got on yourself, not to mention how much you bled. I, well, I am surprised that you survived, this and all the other hits you've taken before," she says while looking away, at the wall opposite his clothing. Eric could only surmise she had given him an inspection while he was asleep. Eric had only seen a dozen battles prior, as a trainee of the Durgan, then his violent encounters thus far on the roads away from home. He had been injured this badly or worse before, and his body already showed it.

"Hazard of my former homeland and employ," Eric replies as he slips his trousers on and belts them. His swords were not on the belt, someone had removed them, and his Gladius was missing as well. "If I may ask, you did recover my Gladius?"

"Yes, we brought everything back," she says. "Yours and theirs," she appends after a moment.

"A Gladius is it? A sword of the Romans or the Durgan," one of the younger-age ladies says. "Which makes you a Legionnaire or a Bladesman or some kind of incredibly lucky bandit."

"Former Bladesman," Eric says as he finishes securing his shirt. The damage he would mend when he got his hand on some proper thread, likely in the next town he ventured to. He did put his finger through the tear where the blade had caught his upper arm. There was very little scar there, much less an open injury as he expected to have a mere day after the battle. "What is this? No wound? Not even a decent scar?" Eric asks after a moment.

"I'll explain everything, Bladesman," the lady in the room says.

"After you," Eric says immediately thereafter, as it was common courtesy to allow a lady through first. She moved through immediately, and Eric followed at a respectable distance into the main room of their establishment. Their quarters were spartan, to say the least. They had no shortage of books, but little else to their names. Eric somehow expected this, as being a secretive society they would have little use for common material possessions. He had no ready idea how much he understated their attitude, though he would in less than an hour.

"First off, I owe you serious gratitude for saving one of our order. I am Elle, the leader of this order. The lady you saved is Miri," their apparent leader says. "Please, have a seat, sir..."

"Eric Atrebas, expelled Durgan Bladesman, now a wanderer," Eric introduces himself after taking the offered seat.

"Why were you expelled?" Miri asks immediately thereafter. "The way you fought, your combat skills were unmatched by those thugs," she notes. "Durgan must have lost one of their best when they dispatched you."

"I was the best of my cadre of trainees by but a thin margin. More than one of my comrades were excellent with the blade as well, and some better than I with the bow or javelin. I was expelled because I was a political threat to the ascendancy of the Mayor-General's son. Rather than chance my taking power by battle skill, a false accusation was leveled against me and I was ordered executed. The executioners, however, were not up to par for the task, shall we say," Eric says smoothly. That was more than he normally said by a long shot about his past, but in this case he figured those around him, about eight total, were on the level. And not one of them male.

"And so you now travel, nowhere to call home," one of the twenty-something ladies to his left says. "What do you seek?"

"To know the world and its ways," Eric replies simply. "The ways of war and peace, life, love, craftsmanship, there is nothing I am unwilling to study."

"Why?" The question was from the elderly cynic, the one that had prior derided him and claimed him a threat to their order.

"Understanding is something that I have always sought. Is there something wrong with that?" Eric asks, unsure of what her continued hostility was due to.

"I find it hard to believe, myself," a far younger lady to Eric's right notes. "Still, I believe him."

"I, as well," a lady at a loom says as she quietly wove a fabric of black threads.

"That being said, if I may ask a question of you?" Elle nods for him to go on. "Of this injury," and Eric indicates his left upper arm, "with what salve did you heal it? Such a powerful curative and restorative would be immensely useful on my journey," Eric prompts, ready and willing to negotiate a high price for such a curative.

"Actually, it was no medicine or remedy," Miri notes.

This confused Eric for a moment, until the next possible came to mind: "Then, did you invoke a deity to see to it?" Eric asks, seeing some form of shrine on the far wall of the establishment, though he could not identify to which divinity it was consecrated.

"No, I saw to it with my spellcraft," Miri says. "We are...what most people call witches." There was a groan to Eric's left, and he need not look to tell that the person in question was the elderly lady of their ranks. "I used my own magical skill to dress and restore your wounds."

Eric contemplates this turn for a few moments. Durgan had long heard tales of plagues said to have been started by witches and such, though Eric put no credence in such tales. Typically, those areas struck by plague were those with poor diet and poor sanitation. Durgan citizens were not the cleanest of persons, per se, but not once had a plague swept through town. Eric figured failures of sanitation the more likely cause than witches' conduct, especially after a real witch had just fixed his wounds in less than a day.

"And for this you have my thanks," Eric replies after a few studied moments. "Rare enough is honorable conduct outside the bounds of certain areas, and such assistance at jeopardy of yourselves is even greater honor. I now understand your fears, but you may rest them. Those of Durgan are raised to believe in the person, not in myths or rumors or insubstantial beliefs. If you can do what you claim, I am required to honor that."

"I knew he was proper of conduct, Elle," the lady at the loom says.

"More to the point, I have no desire to turn your location over to anyone," Eric adds after a moment. "I would not knife your order in the back, you have earned no such conduct. I simply ask, entirely on the level, if you would be willing to instruct me on this art."

"That would not be possible," Elle notes after a moment in silence. "You are male. Our art works only for those who are female. I am sorry."

"Understood," Eric says after a moment, clearly disheartened by this turn of events. "It is a pity, however. Such skill would be incredibly useful to a traveler such as I, despite the likely unwanted attention that would accompany."

"Most of our skills would have immense use on travels, yes, but it would require one of us to accompany you, and none of us are willing to leave these halls. You may remain here until the morning, Eric Atrebas. It is the least of hospitality due to you for saving Miri from their barbaric 'witch-test'. In the morn, Miri will relocate you by spell to where you were recovered."

"Understood, thank you for the help nonetheless. If there is any way I may be of assistance while I am here, you need simply ask."

-x-x-x-

"Is this...is this all that Durgan boys do? Train to become soldiers?"

"In the beginning, yes," Eric replies quietly. If there was any game nearby, he did not want his voice to scare it away. "As candidates are found to be lacking the hardness or skill to eventually become soldiers, they are pulled from the cadre and reassigned to a trade. Some fail early, some fail prior to their teens, some fail just prior to graduation of their cadre. Those that survive the drilling and initial battles join the military. The remainder are tradesmen by that time, or training to be."

"And the ladies?" Miri asks quietly, realizing that Eric was being quiet for a reason.

"They train in a trade, though many of the girls hung around with their brothers to learn something of combat. The sister of my comrade, Stan, was just shy of being a challenge to our cadre, and easily the match of most the third-tier cadre. Many of the ladies are also proficient with the bow, and routinely would go hunting to spare the effort for the military."

"Interesting, so—"

"Hold," Eric interrupts her. "Down, target," he says before taking a knee. An arrow came out, nocked, and the Durgan Bladesman drew his arrow back.

"Where? Oh—" Again, Eric interrupted her expression, though in this case it was with the release of the arrow. A pair of seconds after the shot, the arrow struck the bird, and though adrenaline got the bird moving for a few paces, it collapsed down and stopped writing after a few moments. "Oh, wow, one shot!"

"Durgan believes well in the power of archers, not as massed volley shooters like some, but in single-shot, single strike combat. I am acceptable with the bow, far from the best," Eric admits as they close up on the wild bird shot. "I have long hunted these fowl, yet I find I do not know a name for them."

"A turkey, I think," Miri replies.

"Turkey? Interesting," a deft swing of the knife removed the head of the fowl, rendering it assuredly dead. "This one fed well, it is heavy enough for today's meal and one more, given how many are at your enclave." With a small piece of rope, Eric tied the feet together, then proferred the feet to Miri. "This is the easy way to carry one."

"Oh, wow. You really do this frequently, then," she says.

"More so after I was expelled from Durgan," Eric comments.

"If I may be so bold, why were you expelled from Durgan? Surely someone with your skills would be immensely valued, would he not?"

Eric chuckles grimly. "Strangely enough I was considered too good, a political threat to the ascendancy of a friend of mine to the post of Mayor-General. Thus I was ordered executed essentially for political expediency, disguised as a charge of rape against a lady that for all intents and purposes was a prostitute; a whore I would not have pleasured with a twenty-foot pike shaft, she was that disgusting."

"That...that is...weird."

"It is even better than just that," Eric continues in earnest. "The ultimate irony of the charge was simple: she had told several of my comrades that she wanted to sleep with me, or as she put it in her crude and blunt fashion, 'to test the mettle and hardness of an Atrebas'. Instead, she was bribed into testifying that I had taken her by force, and that was used as grounds to have me executed. Suffice it to say, they should have sent better executioners that day."

Miri was silent for a score of paces. "You...had a lady, did you not?" A moment after asking, she squeaked, covering her mouth. "I—I shouldn't be prying! I am sorry!"

"It is simple history, not prying," Eric replies calmly. "I was betrothed, actually, and due to be married not far beyond my date of 'execution'. Before I left, I asked my best friend to see to her. I can never go back to Durgan, at least not as I am now. I do not want to go back to Durgan, at least until I have learned that which Durgan is missing."

"And that is why you were interested in magic, is it not?" Miri asks slyly. "I knew there was more to it than just your travels."

"Indeed," Eric replies.

"Is it just power?" Miri asks. "Is power what you want?"

"No," Eric replies. "Power is pointless without purpose. Purpose very rarely lasts long enough to be of value to your comrades or your realm. I seek flexibility to help others, and flexibility to demonstrate to people that what people consider 'evil' really is not."

"Oh. That would be nice," she muses. "But...wouldn't that make you hated?"

"By some, I guess," Eric says. "Hard to say."

"You there! Halt!" A voice orders from a distance. "There is the witch!"

"She lives no more!" Another shouts.

"Speaking thereof," Eric grumbles before unslinging his bow and drawing another arrow. Miri watched in abject horror as the group of six charged the two of them down.

Eric did not simply watch, but prepared an arrow. With but a second of aim, a shot was loosed at the foremost of the charging men; seconds later the shot struck him in the gut, bringing him down immediately and tripping up the whole charge. Even as the pile of pissed men disentangled themselves and began standing up another slammed into the ground and did not rise again, this time an arrow in the face to bring him down. They were back on their feet and ready to resume as the third arrow came in, this time a chest shot in the lungs of their erstwhile leader. The charge resumed as Eric set another arrow, but the three survivors had a note of hesitation in their movements, and a fourth shot by Eric (a miss) caused all to dive to the ground practically at spitting range to the archer. They stood up as quick as possible, but not fast enough to be at feet before a fourth was struck down.

With an empty quiver, the bow went aside and his Gladius came out. The two remaining that sought vengeance upon the witch simply looked to each other for solace, but found that when they looked back to the unknown archer that he was charging them down with a very distinctive sword...

-x-x-x-

"So, is this...over for us?" Miri asks. "Are you just going to walk away and forget about us?"

"No," Eric replies. "After last night, forgetting you would be impossible. I am not the heartless professional soldier that Durgan Warriors have become known to be. And I would never forget such a debt of honor. I will return," Eric replies lightly.

"Thank you," and the kiss that Eric received was yet unpracticed, but not lacking in passion. Miri had very acutely reminded Eric that as much as he pined for the lands, walls, buildings, and comrades of Durgan, he could never return there except at the pinnacle of power, and that power he had found was not in the ways of the blade. And in her arms the Bladesman had learned a lesson of value: you only live once, so enjoying the moment was the best way to go about it.

"Though we were simply fooling around last night, we did prove something between other things we did," Eric notes as she draws away slightly. "I could control your spellcraft, so long as you were close to me. Somewhere out there, someone else has to have control of this skill, and I doubt all of them are ladies."

"Then, you go to learn how to become a Sorcerer?"

"I will return after I have accomplished that," Eric assures her. "It will be years, likely, as it took years for you. I will return, I swear to it."

"Then I will hold you to it," Miri replies as she gives him another kiss as well as a playful squeeze. "Thank you once again, Eric Atrebas."

"Thank you for showing me the reality of witchcraft and the so-called 'dark arts'. When next we meet, may it be on a far better introduction."

Miri stood her ground and watched as Eric walked into the forest, headed toward the main road to his next destination. After he was out of sight, she began the series of teleportations that would take her the many miles to the convent that her order of witches called home.

Eric considered that he had learned much in the past day, which made the detour for water all the more valuable. First, he had finally forced himself past the belief that he would see Durgan again as he was now, and would be accepted as he was now. Second, he had discovered that passion, life, love, honor were the things that ruled the actions of others, not necessarily the cold logic that he had been raised on. Third, in less than half a day he had seen more than a dozen witches' spells, and not one of them matched what witches were supposed to spend their lives doing (screwing up the normal, Gods-fearing citizens for starters). More to the point, he had come to the realization that the Dark Arts were not: spellcraft was used to augment normal life and action, not hinder or destroy it. And fourth, Eric had realized that even in a small close-knit group there were people of wildly differing beliefs and attitudes.

These lessons would serve him well, Eric knew. In due time each of those would be the thing that saved him from annihilation, or worse, stagnation and dishonor. He had no clue how influential that change of attitude would be overall, and how many fates it would change.

Back on the road, Eric continued his trek towards the major city to the north, though the city did not match his first major goal. The day was young and he had much vitality to get on with it. Of course, he was not the only denizen on the road today, within fifteen minutes he was passing a merchant's caravan, and not a small one at that. For an hour he passed by their ranks, as they headed in the opposite direction as he. From the members of the convoy he got nothing more than blank stares and silence as they trudged by, driving carts and animals. Not even the guards seemed interested in him, which Eric considered to be poor guard detail.

Silence and solitude as he walked onward for another hour, then a group of hired soldiers approached as he walked onward. Their platoon stopped at thirty yards, making Eric instantly wonder what was going on, or if he would have to fight them in some fashion.

"Hail, vagabond," their commander declares as he approaches. He had his thumbs hooked in his thick belt, but not a hand on a weapon.

"Hail, soldier," Eric replies in a level fashion. "Know you the distance to Gelles?"

"Three hills hence," and the Commander jerks his thumb over his shoulder, toward the direction that Eric was traveling. This immediately changed Eric's mood, he thought he was passing through another intermediate town, not the one he sought. "Tell me, traveler, have you seen any witches in these parts?"

"Allow me a moment to think," Eric replies. Though the gesture was a bullshit stall tactic, they allowed him to think unhindered. "I believe I have seen no such miscreants in these parts, good sir. The last I saw was on the far side of the town south, and I reported them to the authorities there."

"Ah, thank you. We shall detain you no further," he says as he signals for his troops to close up and continue their march south. Eric knew intrinsically the hide of the Witches that had helped him was east, not south, so they were safe.

"Good day," Eric says as he continues walking at a faster pace. _Deception is a powerful skill when used properly_, Eric thinks aloud, making a snap decision then to not shy away from using stealth and subterfuge to complete whatever objective he may have.

The prospect of being in the great city of Gelles enthralled Eric to no end. He had long heard of its attractions from the Bladesmen that had passed through it or served contracts for the city, but to actually be there would be something to see, he was sure. Eric continued his march with a refreshed spirit, knowing he was close to his first major objective. He planned on spending several days in town, working minor single tasks for cash and trading his gear for equivalent and cash or better, as he had a collection of swords and other weapons to sell off.

- - - - -

As he marched over hill and hill, the edges of the town came into view as he approached, though he was still far off. With a hard march he was at the city gates hours past the midday meal, and he finally could breathe easy since he would not be caught outside the city gates at closing.

Eric's first assumption about the town was laid to rest within minutes, Gelles was far less civil than he had assumed. Inside the gates, a simple glance around was enough to warn the ex-Durgan that the denizens and location were not what it was said to be by the Bladesmen that passed through. Just the looks he received from the nearby street vendors was enough to raise his sense of defense, much less the looks from others in the area.

Eric hit the ground in a sprawl of himself and at least one other person; he could hardly tell what was going on for being on the ground under...a pair of almost bare breasts, knocked down and pressed in the most rude fashion he could imagine. On a quick gander Eric could tell her dress had been damaged through rough treatment of some fashion, likely trying to tear it, though was not yet to the point of revealing.

"What the hell?" Eric asks in a daze, before heaving the wench off him and springing to standing. "What in all nine hells is this?" Eric asks as he sees three ladies, each with a damaged upper dress but wearing a proper dress skirt; they had apparently collided with Eric from behind and right as a mob to drive him to the ground.

"You, boy, away from my wenches with you!"

"What?" Eric turns to look, and had barely a moment to see a sword incoming for his left shoulder. "Shit!" Eric shouts as he reacts back and his hand shoots up to intercept the sword.

The crowd gasped in severe shock. The guard squad that had come to survey the ruckus was stunned. The nobles and merchants were stunned, some pissing their pants out of outright fear. Even the wielder of the sword was stunned that anyone had the reflexes and skill to catch a sword, and that only with a mere moment to even see the sword incoming.

"What...are you? God or Demon?"

"I am Durgan," Eric says before he acted. This person was a chaotic threat, making him a target worthy of elimination in Eric's view, as chaotic threats could just as easily turn their blade on those unable to defend as they would on a Durgan-trained Bladesman.

Eric kicked through the assailant's hip with his right boot as he spun around physically. In so doing he maintained possession of the enemy short sword, and as he spun around to face the enemy he took a reverse stabbing grip on the sword, and with more than three-quarters exertion rammed the broad-profile cutting sword through to the hilt straight down the center of his back and out his chest. He fell to the ground and moved not a whit, except the occasional twitch.

"Impossible! He's fucking Durgan?" One of the other three guys that followed behind asks.

To answer their question, Eric drew his own sword in a motion that was so fast as to be barely visible to onlookers on his right, and obscured to his left. When he drew he did so by reverse grip and speedily shifted to a proper grip, which added an extended visual flare to the drama and adroitly represented his swordcraft to the onlookers. Most men were not confident enough in their handling and skill of blades to do such reverses and grips, but this apparent whelp was that confident. After a moment he took on the traditional raised sword guard stance, which finished identifying him as Durgan in most minds that saw it.

"I'm not screwing with this, do what you want," one of the brigands notes as he sheaths his sword and walks away.

"To all nine hells with this, Rexus," another of the three says as he steps back five paces and sheaths his sword before he starts walking away.

"This shit ain't worth dying for," the last of the three says as he sheaths his blade and starts walking.

Once the three were out of range of being an actual threat (without a bow, which none had) Eric uncoiled from guard and sheathed his sword. Others moved about their business, while many remained to either ogle the Durgan Bladesman or ogle the women that had collided with Eric.

"Hellishly impressive, swordsman. I have seen no technique that allows a person to intercept a sword without another weapon or barrier. Truly you are a bladesman worth the hire, if your services are not already taken?"

Eric took a quick gander of the person in question. Middle-aged, acceptably fit, dressed richly but not to the point of being a trouble garner. In a moment Eric had his tack planned, and executed. "My services are available temporarily. I have other duties to see to in three days. Now, for what would you hire my blade?"

"Personal guard," he replies immediately. "Maybe some 'hostile negotiations' if you believe you are up to the task."

"Agreed at thirty gold a day," Eric replies immediately, knowing that was the standard Durgan contract rate for guard operations.

"Agreed. Come along," he waves for Eric to follow, which he does behind and to the right, since it was apparent that his other guards had taken the forward guard.

As they walked, Eric observed the town as well as operated as the dutiful guard. There were less prostitutes in Gelles as there were in the last town, though these were more prominent; they apparently catered to a higher-income crowd. The town watch presence was triple that of the last town, which meant that street crime would be far lower but not completely eradicated. Everywhere was the glint of metal and the shine of jewelry, as the street merchants showed their wares and Eric's ward browsed them, apparently waiting for something.

"Would you like some pleasurable company tonight, good sir?" A streetwalker asks after they left a fine leathers vendor.

"I, no," Eric's ward replies. "Some of my guards might, anyone?"

"Certainly," one replies.

"I would," the smaller, lightly-armed and unarmored of his guards replies.

"No, not for now," the tall North-man replies.

"I'm in," the local ruffian replies.

"Durgan?" Eric's ward asks.

"Not on guard duty, sir," Eric replies. That much was clear from training: if you were on guard, you were on guard, not sleeping with a prostitute, concubine, lover, or wife. Such actual guard duty was one reason why there was no stories of Durgan being sacked—there was actual guards on duty on the walls at all times. There were more tenets that kept the city safe as well, though they did not apply to this matter, Eric knew.

"Okay, I'll be along to your lodge tonight, and such a pity these two are not going to be in it," she says, indicating the North-man and Eric with a coquettish wave.

_Prostitutes, there is no end to them_, Eric thinks sardonically. He then realizes that nobody had yet told her of where the lodging was, yet she knew? Eric intended on keeping an eye on her, due to the fact that her methodology sounded unusually well informed already.

"Your restraint is awesome," Eric's employer notes. "Still, why did you not rail against it completely?"

"Only one guard is really needed at night, given these circumstances. Still and all, I find it unusual that she already knows where you are lodged."

"A commensurate guard," he congratulates. "I have long heard that there is an Assassin's Guild in this town, though I have never sought their services. I am an honest merchant, though some of my competition and even more of my vendors are less than honest," he concedes.

"Not everyone in Existence can be completely honest," Eric notes.

"Few in Existence can, Durgan. Most of those still live in Durgan or Rome; the rest of us simply get along. And as the real fabric of society is stretched, eventually it will tear, especially if what I think shall happen does actually happen."

"And that is?"

"How much to you know of Rome or Greece?"

"Obnoxious city-states to the southeast and east of Durgan, respectively. Rome are infantry experts as we are, Greece more leaning to their naval skills. Both call themselves Republic and act as if they are superior to twice the rest of the world," Eric recites from what he knew of the Greeks and Romans. He crossed blades with the Greeks in defense of a town on the fringe of their territory that did not want to be part of the Athenian model. In that battle he found the Greek Phalanx somewhat lacking on the offense, though the Spartans were far better in that respect than anyone was expecting.

"This is all correct and yet understating the gravity of their position. They will give their people power, and their people will abuse that power because their grounding in morality and honor is less than complete. Though you can say the same thing about monarchs and oligarchs as well, for nobody seems to use their sense of honor when in command, I am unsure if there is a real effective system of government anywhere in Existence."

"There may not be," Eric says, filing this lesson away. He severely doubted that he would ever be in a position to use it, of course, but not knowing would be the whole battle lost should that ever become a possibility. "Even Durgan has its shortfalls."

"But few of them, compared to your noisy neighbors. Come, we shall have lunch here," and he ducks into a restaurant.

-x-x-x-

That night, only the North-man and Eric stood guard in rotating shifts. The prostitute showed up with her sister as well, and both proceeded to lay the whole guard team except the North-man and Eric, and that was it. No conspiratorial actions, as far as Eric could tell, not even a token protest when Eric refused entry to the quarters of his employer.

In the two mutual hours of their guard duty, as each served eight passes of the clock but two were overlapping during the hours of the wolves, Eric learned that the North-man thought that the hands of the Durgan Bladesman he served guard with where guided by the Gods, for they were that fast and expedient in defense. In explanation, Eric learned of the gods of the North, and came to understand another thing about life: everyone has differing beliefs. Silently he wondered if there were many groups of Gods throughout Existence, each controlling a different area, or if there was something else out there, or both. In return, Eric spoke of the Gods respected by Durgan, the same Gods that much of Greece knew of but few worshiped due to Durgan's more narrow (and bloody) focus. The North-man particularly found the rivalry between Athena and Ares to be an interesting, and their conflicting beliefs of combat and conduct in life.

"Someday I will return to the North, to my homelands and my family. What shall you do when you leave in several days?"

"I have much to learn, still, despite my mastery of blade. I will travel the world to learn its ways and methods, but before then I have duty to see to for my state," Eric says.

"Then I suggest you travel north, across the North Sea to the lands of the All-Father. There is much to learn to the north, and a man of your talents and will would be much respected among my people."

"I will do so, someday. Should that be a length of time, what is your name, that I may seek you out when I arrive?"

"Thvrone Helskirder."

"I take it you have seen the lands of Durgan once, since you arrived?"

"They kicked me out for rough-handling a guard that challenged me," Thvrone replies sourly. "And you?"

"Eric Atrebas."

"If I may ask, Eric, how do you do that, where you caught a sword?" the North-man questions in a non-aggressive fashion.

"I have trained in strength, yes, but I have also trained in speed. Since I was ten years of age, my mother would train me in the trick, first demonstrating how to grip the blade, then as I took swings at her she would demonstrate the catches. Then I would practice catching her swings until I could catch a battle swing reliably. I can trap most blades in one fashion or another," Eric says without the tone of boasting. "It is...years of training, nothing more."

"Years of training and an expert's understanding of the blade," the smallest of the guards notes as he steps out of his room. "Oh, concern not about the wenches, Durgan, they have done enough screwing for one night; they are worn out and asleep," he comments when Eric looks to the door he had emerged from. "Besides, the local guy was fondling her when I left, so she is still watched."

"Understood," Eric replies. "And you are correct, understanding how a blade moves is part of the act of catching it. The remainder is the reaction."

"Oh, so most of it is your reaction speed, like this?" a dagger came out and was thrust, but in such a fashion that a greenhorn could have dodged it; in essence, a clear test. Eric, on the other hand, captured the blade between both hands due to its rapid close. "By the Gods, he does not boast of his skills," the small guy says.

"Your thrust speed is good with this blade," Eric notes as he twists the knife from his grip and starts flipping it casually, "but what of this one?" before the small guy could react, Eric had drawn the small guy's short sword and was testing the balance.

"Damn, this guy really does have the hands of the Gods, he is fast," the small guy says. "I've lifted stuff from people before, but this guy must do it on a regular basis," he notes."

"It is a training requirement of all Durgan soldiers," Eric notes. "Before you reach training age, you are a street rat and forest scavenger. No molly-coddling of the young among the Durgan, you make your way by being unseen and unheard or you go hungry. The only solicitude you get is a permanent home, and your spoils are expected as compense for your meals, or you go steal your meals." Eric had sharpened those skills of his to a razor's edge, which helped later in his training and specifically in his ability to catch blades. Few were the days when Eric missed a meal, even when he had to steal it.

"Ah, I understand now," the small man replies. "And I am faster with that blade than I am with the dagger," he says as Eric returns the short sword.

"Then prove it," Eric says, indicating his right pectoral.

"Aye," he replies as he takes a thrust-master's stance and prepares. With one lightning motion he stepped forward and drove in on the requested location.

Eric's skills were as good as advertised, as was his foe's skills with the blade. The North-man barely saw the thrust, much less Eric's counter as he trapped the blade between the heels of his palms, drove it outside to the right and away from his chest, and compressed it to a stop between his hands. In complete shock the erstwhile assailant completely released his grip, stunned that anyone had that level of skill. "Impossible, that was my best thrust," he replies.

"An excellent thrust, as well," Eric replies as he flips the blade up and catches it left-handed. He flexes his right and shows the heel of it to both the North-man and his smaller comrade; on it was the bleeding indentation where the tip of the sword had bitten his palm-heel just slightly. "Your skills are as advertised, comrade, you forced me to react too quickly. Woe would betide the lumbering foe you face, for you could likely dance circles around a slower opponent, if nothing poking him to death 'till he bleeds out from small punctures."

"While you would slay him at range from arrow shots or skewer him several times over when in close," the same replies. There was no question that the bow Eric carried was for combat, several of the arrows on inspection showed the unmistakable trace of human bloods, and Eric had declared he used his bow to sort out house-invaders and bandits when they crossed him in his travels.

"And our tall comrade needs only pick a man up by the skull and crush him in hand," Eric notes; "or use that tall ax of his to chop a man in half. I have known many good warriors who relied on strength to win the battle, but it is not my way," Eric replies in a neutral tone, meaning he held no disdain for that position. "Not to mention, may I see that sword of yours?" Eric asks, having been curious of the nature of his large sword all day.

"Certainly, Durgan," the North-man says as he draws it and presents the pommel.

Eric had to hold the sword with two hands, it was that large. The edge surface was only two inches to each side, where it stopped was a flat that spanned two more inches across the center of the blade. Of length, the blade was as tall stood on tip as he was in a slight crouch. A weapon for massacring enemies, Eric could sense just by holding it—and after a few moments he could sense that it had drawn much blood in battles past.

"A blade with a history, I can sense," Eric notes, realizing what he was feeling. He had felt the same on blades that had seen real battle in Durgan; part of his expertise was seeing those battles in night dreams he had on days after holding a veteran's blade. Eric tried a pair of thrusts, one from the left, one from the right, at dead air in the hall, and found the balance to be slightly more forward of what he expected. All in all, he figured if nothing else it could break a man on a solid hit to the shield, much less chop through the enemy on a hit to the soldier in question. "An interesting blade. Should I venture to your lands, I will study the blade and its tactics."

"The village I live in is more inland from the seas than others; I am not part of a longship crew myself, for I find myself better on land than at sea or from raiding."

"Every person has strengths, weaknesses. I am one for the line or the archers; a horse and I will never agree on what direction to travel, much less how to do battle," Eric admits without any trace of shame. He did not like horses, and they returned the favor. Of course, he saw the value in raiding cavalry and the inherent value in speed strikes, not to mention the morale effects of cavalry on friend and foe alike, but Eric simply could not do cavalry.

"A horse? You would use one to fight? A horse or other animal is for moving material, not fighting battles," the North-man notes dourly.

"You may be the smartest of us all," Eric notes with a tone of humor. He had heard of horses pitching their riders, and the resulting injuries.

"It is now your turn to sleep. Get to it, the small one shall keep me company until daybreak," the North-man replies with his own smile in the center of a massive beard. Eric kept his mustache small and thin, unobtrusive, as was the customs of Durgan.

"Good eve," Eric replies as he heads for the guards' common room. Within, all the guards were asleep, though they had left the bed to the two ladies, who had pulled up the covers and were asleep. One of them did not seem correct to Eric, as if something was wrong with her. Eric had always been able to tell intuitively when his comrades had problems of one bent or another when he was close enough, and he was almost always right. As he approached the bed, he checked the one on the left for a pulse, and found her all right; his touch cold, she roused and looked at him for a moment as he had his hand on her sternum between her ample breasts.

"Do you want some entertainment after all?" she asks quietly, as more than half the security was asleep.

"Something is wrong," Eric replies as quietly. Within moments he had moved around the bed and had his hand on the other ladies' sternum.

"What?" the confirmed-alive harlot asks as Eric's jaw clenches.

"She is dead," Eric replies, sensing no heart beat at her sternum or her neck.

"What?" This was shrill enough to have awoken the guards, who were not pleased by the interruption of their sleep.

"I lie not about this. Here, feel," Eric takes her hand and places it to the deceased's sternum. "You feel nothing, correct?"

"No...this...this cannot be, she was alive hours ago, what could have happened?"

"The heart can have problems that never show until strained, and by then it is all over but the final moments," Eric replies. One other thing Durgan was well known for was medical studies, as these knowledges helped keep Durgan's relatively small army going farther, harder and longer. Injuries were more easily repaired and the soldier returned to service than to remove limbs and expel the hapless soldier, after all. Eric's one regret was that medical wizardry would never be a skill they had, and likely one he would never know either.

"But, all she has done today is have love made to her," her sister replies, shocked.

"The harlot is dead?" the local ruffian asks, rather bewildered.

"Aye, she is dead," Eric replies stoically. "And keep in mind that sex is a strain on both parties, milady," Eric replies to the living one's statement of her activities. "Does your whorehouse have a courtyard or back yard?"

"Well, yes," the living one replies.

"Then we bury her. Take me there," Eric says as he picked the deceased up in a cradling carry. She was light, little strain to the Durgan soldier. "You and you, take the guard until the North-man and I return," Eric orders.

The local ruffians stood up and shook the fog of sleep off. "Understood, sir," the taller of the two replied. They were not going to disobey the best of the Guards, despite his short time in service, and especially when he would show such an honor to one whom he had not even slept with, much less known.

-x-x-x-

"If I may ask, Durgan, why did you bury a common prostitute?" his ward asks plainly. "Such accords are normally reserved for the higher society."

"To die doing one's duty, or as a result of one's duty, is an honor. Even if that duty is simply to sate a man for a day," Eric replies. "It is for that reason that I would bury a demon if I knew he was just doing his job." There was a bit of a groan to that phrasing, but nothing outright was said.

"Your sense of honor is...unusual," their employer says. "Still, after seeing your hands in action, not to mention a blade you have never before used, I do not regret the investment in your time. Or any of you six, given the company we are about to acquaint ourselves with."

Eric nodded, said nothing. He had a general idea were they were headed, as in the past thirty minutes of walking and passing through crowds the environs had only become more and more disreputable. And he feared that he had farther to go into the bowels of this city before they reached their objective.

In reality, they were almost upon the target building when Eric had made his comment about burying a demon. The group stops, and the employer calls them together for a briefing. "Listen, and listen well, for this crew I do not trust even in a small amount. We will all enter and go to a certain point, but after that only myself and two will go to the final negotiation area. If things go sour as I hope they shall not, we shall have to leave in a large hurry, and that is where all of you come into play."

"Who shall we send in with you?" the North-Man asks.

"I was expecting you and the Durgan," their employer replies.

"If I may, I advise against utilizing the North-man in a confined space. Size and strength are more a hindrance than an asset when confined," Eric says with an apologetic glance to said warrior. The North-man nods in understanding, as Eric's logic is one he had encountered before.

"And who do you suggest, then?"

"The rogue," Eric notes, indicating the smallest of the team. "In a small space, speed is the master of strength, as strength requires room to deploy properly. Speed can make up for it almost instantly."

"Understood, any objections?" he asks the unit as a whole. There were none. "Very well, we go," he says as he begins approaching a building. The march was a matter of yards, nothing major.

"Halt, who goes there?"

"A simple merchant, to speak to your boss," the employer replies to the guard's challenge. Eric checked the position of the sun before he entered the structure, to find it just prior to mid-day positioning. Good, if he had to fight an extended battle he still had half the day to execute it in.

"Best you come out of that room alive, Durgan," the North-man notes before they open the final set of doors.

"Indeed," Eric replies stoically.

The doors were pushed open and Eric entered first, followed by their ward, followed in turn by the smaller of the guards. Eric moves to the right and behind the chair for their employer, and immediately surveys the ranks of the erstwhile foes.

They all looked like gutter trash to the Durgan warrior; several of their weapons showed signs of wear and improper maintenance or none at all. Not one of them looked more than a thug in all but name, and they were staring at Eric like they wanted to kill him for kicks. Their employer fared no better under Eric's scrutiny, for he looked like scum himself. Scum that employs scum, an unsurprising revelation to the professional soldier.

"Good morn, I am told you wish to make a purchase," the resident replies.

"Indeed. As is requested, here are the details," a parchment roll was presented to one of the thug 'retainers', which in turn was presented to their boss.

The roll was unfurled and read in a matter of moments. "This price is absurd!"

"I can do better through other channels," Eric's ward replies. "I offer this to you before I take my request elsewhere," and apparently 'elsewhere' was well known to both of them.

"I will do this for 1850, no less," the supplier replies crassly.

Eric afterwards had to admit that he had tuned out the conversation itself, focusing on the personnel in the room. He could tell by observing that they did not tune it out, were paying more attention to his ward than they were to the really threatening of the personnel here, but they did not realize the error of their own ways. In time, Eric came to the conclusion that they really were little more than scum hired by scum, as the supplier became outright hostile over the negotiating tack Eric's ward took.

"I claim insult on you!" the supplier that would not be shouts, drawing Eric's focus sharply back to the 'negotiations'.

"If you are unwilling to cut a fair price for something I can obtain cheaper elsewhere, then I have no business here. You have my apologies for imposing on your time," Eric's ward says as he stands. "I bid you good day," he says as he properly pushes his chair in and starts toward the doors.

"Doors!" the supplier shouts, and the two guards at the doors immediately and violently close them. "I am not through with you, merchant!"

"Durgan," Eric's ward says, which draws sharp gasps from multiple in the room.

Eric steps forward, looking from one side of their ranks to the other with the contempt he had felt since he entered the facility. "Have those doors opened," Eric orders directly.

"And who are you to give me an order like that, boy?" the 'supplier' says.

"That was not a request," Eric replies calmly. "NORTH!" he shouts at the door, and for a moment nothing happens...

...until the doors give in with a massive shudder and slam open, in the process badly injuring both the door guards. The North-man steps into the longer-than wide room. The other guards were quick to follow him in and take up positions, weapons drawn and dead bodies behind them. "I will hunt you all down for this insult," their 'supplier' says.

"The man who pursues us will die for their effort, at range or at close, whichever I find the more preferable," Eric says. "And don't think for a minute I can't deliver a head-shot on you walking left to right at a hundred yards," Eric adds to counter their sneers at the thought of him striking them down at range. "Sir, I suggest we be gone from this house," Eric says to his ward.

"We are through here," Eric's ward says as they begin funneling out the double doors toward the main entrance. They were silent until they left the structure, then there was nothing more than curses all around their ranks for the scum that had tried forcing the issue.

"By the Gods, I have neither seen nor dealt with such scum in my life," the rogue says. "Pray tell we do not have to deal with his kind again," he entreats to their ward.

"No, we shall not. Henceforth we work with better suppliers, I am through dealing with their kind of scum," the ward says.

Eric was walking backwards, his right hand in the belt loop of the North-man to ensure he was walking along with the group, though his concern was silent observation of the now-hostile supplier's base of operations. Nothing became of the facility for minutes, until as one a group of four ran out of it with drawn blades, looking around and when spotting Eric beginning a charge. "Enemies!" He says as he pulls loose the bow and nocks an arrow in less than six seconds.

"Defend the boss!" the Rogue shouts as he draws his sword in anticipation of close-range work. The first of Eric's foes hits the ground at fifty yards, downed by an arrow dead center to the chest. The second falls at forty yards, an arrow to the leg that caused him to fall and roll, screaming bloody murder. The third was missed on the first shot, but not missed on the second as the arrow pierced him in the neck and caused him to fall to his death in a skid. The fourth died at Eric's feet, literally, as he took the hit at eight yards and rolled to a stop in front of the Durgan warrior, the rolls snapping the haft of the arrow off and driving the remainder deeper into his sternum.

"Good Gods, forget Ares, it is Apollo that guides your hands and nerves, Durgan," the ruffian says. Four more had come out of the structure and needed only follow the trail of bodies to see where Eric stood, before Eric aimed an arrow and loosed it. The blood-curdling scream that their erstwhile supplier let out as it penetrated his cheek at sixty yards was enough to turn the stomachs of all but the most battle-hardened of the guards, much less the merchant, but this did not bother Eric in the slightest. The net effect was the vindication of what Eric had told of his archery skills, and their whole compliment knew what would happen to them should they try their comrade's tactic.

Instead of running toward in a suicide charge, they ran away. They did not stop, and few among them dared to look back at the (ex-)Durgan Bladesman.

-x-x-x-

Over the next two days just the presence of Eric at the negotiations the Merchant held made the suppliers a lot more civil and their guards a lot less intimidating. One could even call their conduct civil, though Eric more or less attributed that much to their working with more honest suppliers, not necessarily his presence.

The Rogue countermanded that observation immediately. "You are walking fear factor, Durgan," he says. Thus far, nobody other than the North-Man knew Eric's real name. "These punk guards see you, they start praying inside the confines of their minds that you do not kill them for even looking at you wrong. I know that you only strike when you need, but they don't see that, when they look at you they see a merciless soldier. A Myrmidon like few others," he concludes. "Gods have mercy on those who challenge the Durgan Military," he tosses out after a few moments of silence, which was assented to by grunts from the rest of the team.

"Were I Berserkir, I would dread fighting you, Durgan," the North-Man adds. "The Gods do not simply favor you, they guide your hands for some purpose we mortals could only begin to guess," he says.

"I do not know if the Gods guide my hands or not, or which Gods they may be, or if they lend me their skills off and on, or if I have come this far on blind chance. If they are, I am truly grateful to their assistance, and I can only hope that my efforts are worthy to the task thus far unspoken. Yet, I find that my purpose calls and I must begone for the next leg of my travels," Eric says, none of which was a shock to them.

"As you requested, your compense of thirty golds a day," the Merchant says. "I am now confirmed of the power and skill of the Durgan, despite your steep price. Were more of you available, I would hire more of you."

"Many of our units route through here," Eric says. "Some are even contracted to parties in this town. Should you encounter them, it is no harm to ask for their services. The worst you would get is a 'no' from the unit commander, and the best you would get is several of them."

"I shall keep that in mind. Good luck, Durgan, on whatever endeavors you avail yourself on," Eric's former employer says.

"Skill and honor, sir. When we shall meet again, be it years from now or in the lands of Elysium, may fate steer your ranks true until then." Eric says as he comes to attention.

"Keep your ass alive, Durgan," the Rogue says. "I want a decent spar out of you sometime again," he adds after a moment.

"I will look forward to meeting you in the North Lands in coming years, comrade," the North Man says as he salutes Eric with his massive sword.

Eric turns smartly and begins walking out of the gate. The guards at the northern gate came to full attention as he passed, knowing that this guy was a true soldier more than fit for their ranks, much less private employ.

For hours Eric marched into the brightening day, his spirits light and his money pouch heavy. He was pleased with the outcome, for even though not identifying himself completely he still advanced the prestige and fear factor of the Durgan Bladesmen, and in his heart he knew he would never completely be severed of their ways. There were some grumbles that he could not go back, but he would become what he could before he did return, whether it be to die in sight of the Mayor-General's house or to eliminate Edgar Caecilius in righteous combat. And now he had objectives, such as being a mercenary and forwarding the fear factor of Durgan, and trying to find some way to learn magic despite what he heard prior.

Eric swore he would live and enjoy it, true to what he was and what he wanted to be. He wanted to be was something far more than just a sword-swinging grunt, fighting for the glory of a Mayor-General that right now was incompetent, and were it his friend in said position, unwilling. Eric wanted to learn, all arts of war and as many as possible of the walks of life that he could find. To learn the dread skills wizardry and witchcraft, that he could find application for them other than what he had heard in lore of their misuse, would be an achievement that would be a shining (and probably insane) example of what Durgan was missing.

The march onward, aimless, continued into the rising sun. At a short distance, in a valley between two hills, Eric came into sight of an unusual scene. A lady, on the ground and propped against a large boulder, stood over by two ladies and three guys, at least two around the same age as Eric. His approach was noted, though focus remained on the lady even as he closed the short distance to the knot of people. "Morning, traveler," one of the men says.

"Morning. What gives?" Eric asks.

"She appeared out of nowhere, and a guy speared her. I'm not sure how to help her, is there anything different about witches?" the elder lady says. Given what he could see of the five, they appeared to be a family with older children.

"No, there should be no difference, a witch is just as human as you or I." Eric kneels down next to the lady. "Damn, this is not a good hit, it will bleed heavily. Have you a clean cloth or rag?"

"I do," the daughter says. "She's...really human?"

"I am yet to meet a witch that is not human," Eric says, though he silently admitted the amount of witches he had met thus far in his (short) life was miniscule. "That rag, please, and one of you help me in laying her out."

The elder son aided Eric in bringing her properly prone, where Eric had the daughter apply the cloth and simply hold pressure to the wound to stanch the blood flow. "What now, sir? We can't stay like this, the man that stabbed her swore to come with a posse," the younger son (who appeared to be only slightly younger than Eric was) says.

"Let them come, one or ten I will strike them down myself. She cannot be moved, for if this injury is aggravated she will die of simple blood loss. Young one, in the left side of my gear pack is a bottle of mead and a box of thread, I will need them."

"Here," it did not take the younger son long to find the two requested materials. "What are you—"

"A wound can be sewn up, just as a tear in a shirt. The trick is to do so in a way that it heals instead of becoming an infection."

"They come!" the father shouts. "Four on horseback!"

"If I must do battle, I cannot begin the sew. Here," and Eric stages the thread box but does not remove a thread yet. After, he removes his pack and pulls a substantially cleaner cloth from it, then cracks seal on the mead. "Remove the old cloth."

"Sure," the daughter says. Eric douses the cut with the more-alcohol-than-material mead, then douses the surface of the cloth with it. He places it on the puncture in her shoulder, then puts both hands of the daughter on the cloth.

"Press hard on it and do not let up for any reason. The battle may come close to you, but I intend on striking them down. Do not flee, unless I am felled, clear?"

"Yes, sir," she replies.

"Where is the witch?" A boisterous one asks as the horses come to a stop and four dismount. "You, stand clear! We will burn the witch here!" The four had dismounted, Eric could tell with only his peripheral vision, and were approaching him. "I said stand—"

The lead never completed his sentence, as Eric sprang into action with speed unrivaled and almost unseen by those around him. Nobody was sure of when his short sword had been drawn, but the blade of the Gladius was rammed all the way to the hilt through the front of the lead's neck, and his body was dispatched by a swift kick that sprawled his remains onto two of the other three. Before the remaining vertical of the executioners could begin to react, Eric had drawn one of his broadswords and gone for the two downed foes, with deft strokes to sever heads while they struggled to stand.

His advantage was short-lived, as the fourth regained composure and pressed the issue with a similar sword to Eric's broadsword, lending first a nick against Eric's left arm, then a heavy gash up his right thigh. Eric could not stand against the fire running up and down his leg, and simply collapsed into the wound, though he was smart enough to maintain possession of his sword to parry blows. He immediately rolled to prone facing up, his sword at the ready to block blows.

"KNAVE!" The enraged survivor shouts, viciously trying to hack into Eric's head with overhead swings and failing only because of Eric's superior guard ability. The strikes came too fast for the Durgan soldier to mount a counter-offensive; he knew without any options he was a dead man right here and now, and likely the lady he was trying to save all the same. Proof came as his sword was critically dislodged, and his body too wracked with pain to reliably catch the sword blade. The enemy sword went high into the sky for a tremendous finishing blow; Eric simply smiled at his end.

Before the swing could begin, the blade of a Gladius came through the chest of his assailant, followed momentarily by the collapsing enemy dropping to his knees. The elder son knocked the sword out of his hands, then used a belt knife to cut his throat redundantly before shoving the body aside so it did not collapse on Eric. The daughter, who had drove Eric's short sword through his chest, hauled on the blade several times, but it took the strength of the father to pull it clear of the deceased.

"You are bloody insane, Durgan soldier," he says.

"Later," Eric bemoans before he started dragging himself across the ground to where the witch was now being attended by the mother.

Eric Atrebas never made it all the way to his intended task before blacking out, this time from a horridly bleeding gash to his leg.

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Author's Chapter Afterword:

Chapter two, and thus far things have really turned out to be stranger than even I expected. The dice are one to play favorites, strangely enough, and this chapter is clear evidence thereof. Eric scored a lot of arrow shots, more than I honestly expected he would score. Still and all, such conduct fits the Durgan Bladesman to a tee. Eric boasts not idly, he is good with a sword from a lifetime of training, but he is better with a bow, better at range instinctively. It is a trait that will come back to haunt him just as much as it saves him.

The reviewers of this first chapter are correct, there will be much length and volume to this work. It will get messy. It is destined to be messy. It will take quite a while to ramp up to that point, however, for the events that would spawn the Jokers Wild have only begun to unfold, and the actors in the sad tale that precedes the Jokers Wild have not yet even begun to realize their true potential.

I will admit, though, Eric seems to have very crappy luck with witches. Such is fate, however.

That is pretty much all I have to comment for this chapter. NEXT UP: This witch is far from all that she initially appeared to be, and such a reality may end up costing Eric more than it is worth in the long run...

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Review Replies:

Three reviews for the first chapter in a long saga of chaos, mayhem, destruction, and oddity. Much thanks for the fuel, this fire shall burn hotter with the ideas thrown in :P

**Knives91**: A different tale, yet as the story progresses you shall see how this tale is not entirely indifferent or perverted from my other works. Namely, it will be long in the unfolding, and sharp in arts I cannot truly express in my other works due to scale, limiting factors, or plot. And, of course, you can hazard a guess as to where this one shall go, given the back-story of certain of my other works :P

**Necroblade**: Your continued assistance in beta work is always appreciated. I swear, the butchery I make of the English language should be criminal, given the amount of red marks in my beta docs.

The matter of being a nonspecialist combat specialist is not a matter of who is better, for in the end the specialist will win if the battle is confined to that specialty. Flexibility is the key of Durgan, skill comes with time but the recruits are molded into warriors that are flexible and adaptive just as much as they are drilled and lethal. You will see this flexibility come into play more and more as the story progresses...

On your last note, be prepared for one hellish roller-coaster ride. You have seen near the end, and you are now witness to the beginning, yet there is no proper explanation for the nightmares that lie in between. You will have to see to believe, trust me on that if nothing else :-0

**Etienne Of The West Wind**: It is indeed early in the tale that started the Jokers Wild, and much will happen between now and then to make pale even that bloodbath. Yet, it will not be lacking the human touch, or as much as I can muster. I am still working on certain elements of my writing...

You are correct, and to the point more accurate about the test than I was. I am trying to keep it cohesive, close to fact and yet flexible enough to work with the other elements of the narrative as necessary. Forgery is a handy skill, however :) And I try to keep the use of creative license to a reasonable level, though certain things are unavoidable.

THANK YOU ONE AND ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! More fuel makes for a hotter, longer fire, when all is said and done :)

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The Gripe Sheet:

No active gripes, appears that **Necroblade** cleaned up my prose to passable :) Much thanks to ye, Necro :)

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Footnotes:

None for this chapter.

* * *

Included Elements:

All elements apply from the prior chapter.

NEW ELEMENTS:

**IRL**:

—Not all arms dealers are reputable.

—When escorting the ward out of the dealer's building, Eric walked backwards with his hand in the belt of the second-to-last in the column. This is proper police technique for a rearguard in a not-completely-secured area, as it allows them to cover the rear while not losing track of the rest of the team.

Generic RPG:

—The escort detail. Some people love these kinds of missions, some don't.


	3. Machinations

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 3: Machinations)

The transition from sleep was abrupt, sharp, wildly unexpected by his body, given heart rate and sweating and breathing. Despite the immediate start, it was not a nightmare that had stirred the ex-Durgan soldier, it was something else, something not scary, but something battle.

"What in all nine hells?" Eric asks nobody in particular, looking around his environs. He was in some form of forest clearing, nearby a small creek, and that was all he could tell of the area. More telling than the scenery, there was no people nearby, and no evidence that people had been nearby him at all. Just himself, and no idea how he got there or even where he was.

A minute's pause, then, "What the hell was that dream?" Eric asks aloud, and thoroughly expected no answer. He remembered looking through something that appeared to be glass, watching a hill that appeared sparkling at random intervals; the sound of thunder all around him, never stopping, sometimes louder than others. A distant voice said something about Existence, Eric could not remember the phrase said, and then the hill was engulfed in blue light, radiant dark blue like the skies of mid-morn, then there was no hill after the light faded. "This is insanity, I am seeing **what** with these mind-numbing dreams?" he asks himself in clear frustration.

With no answer available from the trees, and no being in the area to explain such misfortunes to him, Eric decided that concerning over the matter would not be a good method to waste the dawning morning. Silently Eric moved to turn and stand, collect his gearpack from the ground behind him, and continue north by east as was his prior intention. "Perchance dealing with witches and such is not my proper fate, it seems the Gods are keen to render me unconscious whenever I come in contact with their ranks," Eric notes to the slowly swaying grasses nearby. A deer ten yards west of him perked up, took one look at him, and locked eyes with the wandering mercenary. "Or are they challenging me? What is your take? Should I seek spellcraft?" Eric asks it nonchalantly and almost in a derisive fashion, expecting no answer from the likes and almost amused by it.

The deer ducked down below the level of the grasses again, which was answer enough for Eric. He would get no answer from the like, thus he would have to find his own answer in the coming travels. Eric simply hefted his gearpack, applied new string to his bow, and prepared to be on his way after checking his swords. The rustle of grass to his left drew his attention in that direction, lending awareness to a sight that Eric swore he never wanted to see: a wolf, a very large wolf easily bigger than Eric stood tall by more than half. The hell if it was, the wolf in question had not been there when Eric first arose, for he knew he checked its present position after rousing.

A growl came from the beast as Eric's right hand came in contact with the pommel of his Gladius, though as he removed it the beast stopped his warning. Eric spread his hands to show he would draw no arms, and the wolf simply shook its head. "You would not have me draw arms, nor would you have me surrender. What shall be the course?"

The crowing of a raven drew Eric's attention down and left from the wolf, where the bird was perched on a book. It looked at Eric for a moment, ruffled its feathers, then pecked at the book underneath its claws twice. The wolf shifted its right forepaw to push the book across the ground and closer to Eric. The shifting tome upset the raven quite a bit, who flipped its wings at the wolf but engendered no reaction from the canine.

The ex-Durgan soldier could not help but chuckle at the sight of the raven berating the wolf, nor the symbolism of the whole matter. The lessons of the North-man rang clear in Eric's mind, especially the details of the divinities of the Viking and their echoes in natural beings—or their servants. "So, are you the thought, or are you the memory?" Eric asks of the raven.

Again the wolf shakes its massive head in clear answer that Eric had spoke wrong. The raven flapped its wings, this time at Eric.

_Soon you will cross paths with those who truly understand. For today, guard this tome, it may yet be the salvation you seek_.

Before Eric could even open his mouth to respond to the words echoing in his mind, the raven disappeared, the wolf stood and turned to walk away, fading into thin air as it turned away from Eric. Only the book remained.

"The divinities of a land I have never seen are assisting me? What...am I now...good Gods," Eric says. "What have I become?" Eric asks the grass depressed by the wolf. "Or, more appropriately, what shall I become?"

It only took five paces for the Durgan soldier to reach the book. It was nondescript, a simple tome that he picked up and put in his hip pack, where it would be easiest guarded. Nothing else remained in the area, none of his personal equipment was unaccounted for, so Eric decided that his march would continue despite the pressing mysteries of the day. Eric derived northeast and began his march, content that he would find some answers soon enough. He could always take a look at the book near the end of the day.

-x-x-x-

(6 hours later)

The outskirts of town were veritably deserted, with only an apprentice left to service a forge fire. His tale was quick and to the point, a religious assembly had been called in the center of town. Unsure why a whole town would be called to religious duty at once, Eric decided he would observe the proceedings and understand a little more about the world.

As he approached the center of town, Eric began to acquire a feeling of apprehension, that something was not quite correct in the happenings of here and now. "Hey, a traveling soldier!" a little kid half-shouts.

"Give him hospitality! Let the traveler forward!" someone near the center of the crowd says. The people jostle a path open for Eric to come forward, which he did, despite the sickening feeling of seeing people tied to stakes and wood piled below them.

"Hail traveling soldier!" someone says, coming forward to shake Eric's hand. "Spare you an evening to guard our lowly town?"

"Perchance, thank you for the hospitality," Eric says.

"What say you, soldier? Have they earned their death?" a couple of rough-looking guys asks.

"What are their crimes?" Eric asks in retort.

"This one is a witch," his wave indicates the nearest of the six stakes. "The other five are her consorts."

"Consorting with a witch is a crime?" Eric asks. "Have you no better cause to take their lives than this?"

"They were also responsible for the death of four men, brutally slain when they rode out to torch the witch after having wounded her with a spear," their 'lead' says. "So, what say you to torching for murder?"

"Four men was it? Two beheaded, two run through with a flat thrusting blade?" Eric asks to clarify they were speaking of the same battle.

"One was also cut of neck with an unsharpened blade, but yea, you are aware of their crimes?"

"I am aware of this incident, I am the person that prosecuted their elimination," Eric says, intent on clearing the family's good name. "Two run through by Gladius," and Eric demonstrates said blade by drawing it. "Two beheaded by broadsword. These were witness to the happenings, not involved."

"What, you? One man?" the ruffian asks. "What form of sick jest is this?"

"I would ask you the same," Eric replies tersely. "Foremost, I have just admitted to what you call a crime, and what I call sparing an innocent life from death by flame. Witch though she may be, do you have evidence she has done any of you wrong?" The silence from the crowd was answer enough. "And here you stand, torch in hand and seeking justification from a wanderer to kill her without cause. A family is tied to stakes all the same, to be executed for a crime I committed, and none of ye would step up and remove them from the stakes even when their innocence is manifest." Eric chuckles grimly in the silence. "And you ask me for protection from denizens outside the borders of this town? You can kill the defenseless, yet you are defenseless yourselves, and for that I call you all cowards, heathens, and dishonored scumdogs."

"What mockery is this?" an elder man asks. "We would provide for you, we ask only your blade in defense against the barbarians outside the city, and you insult us?"

"I have accepted no hospitality, nor have I agreed to defend you. Given this travesty," and the wave of Eric's sword to the stakes indicates what he meant clearly; "I would sooner walk and let you receive your just fate than chance my life in your defense. For my concern, the Gods will exact their toll on you soon enough for your transgressions," Eric declares sharply, playing on their religious fears.

"What?" A mid-aged lady asks. "What would you have us do?"

"You? You shall do nothing," Eric replies. "Apparently not one of you is of resolve to do the honorable thing, thus I shall in your stead." Eric's sword flashed up the side of one stake and down the other, to sharp gasps from the onlookers. The severed ropes released the two men that Eric had assisted in helping the witch. "See to the others," Eric says after presenting them two small knives. As the two men begin freeing the four ladies, Eric stepped toward the ring of the crowd, and unwittingly proved himself right. The entire crowd cleared back and away from him a pace for every step he took. It did not make him happy to engender raw fear in a populous as he had done, but he knew that fear was its own weapon when used right. "I stand before you, having confessed to what you believe is a crime. If your convictions are deeper than the surface of a mirror, feel free to exact your vengeance upon me. Else, I suggest you all return to your meek existence and spare the affairs of honor to those who understand honor."

Eric could see it in pairs of eyes here and there, a few souls willing to rise to the challenge and try their hand. The rest were as before, afraid to challenge him, afraid to back down, afraid to breathe in some cases. To point of fact, one of the ladies nearest Eric collapsed from asphyxiation, unwilling to breathe and thus draw attention to herself. "Faugh, this is stupid!" Eric grumps. "You and you, help her to her quarters, she passed out from not breathing," Eric orders of two nearby ladies with the sensibility to keep breathing. "I am through with this shit. Do what you will, spineless whelps."

Without another word, Eric sheathed his sword, moved to the witch that was being supported by the man of the family, and picked her up in a cradling carry. She was light, far less weight than the average among Eric's age group in Durgan, and transporting her was a simple task for the ex-Durgan soldier.

-x-

It was long outside the town before the first was said from anyone. "Again you save us, wanderer. We cannot repay this," the elder daughter says.

"No, you were not in need of salvation when last we met. It is I who owe you the thanks for running through the last of them, lest he split my head with that sword."

"He was right," the younger daughter says. "What he said was right," she continues. "They are honorless cowards, unable to defend themselves but easily capable of overpowering us and burning us at the stake."

"It was a campaign of mind," from the witch Eric was carrying, it was a severe shock to them to hear her say anything aloud. "Please, soldier, you do not need to carry me further."

"We are near my farmstead now," the father notes. "The least I owe you is quarter and ration for your actions, soldier, and the lady is welcome as well."

"If you will consent to being carried for a short period longer?" Eric asks of the lady, who simply nods in response.

"All things considered, I would welcome an explanation as to what you mean of 'a campaign of mind,'" the son asks.

"Simple," the witch replies. "He played their fears as a weapon to be used against them. A fear of direct action, as they were unwilling to attack him given the 'crime' he admitted. A fear of the Gods, saying they had earned their fates if they were to be attacked. A fear of honor, that they could justify their actions in one sense and not in another. And lastly, he used their own overall indecision as cover to free us."

"And cause thereto, I drew blade but never once had to strike down more of their ranks. The hesitation, indecision or outright fear in their ranks was armor enough for all that I did," Eric notes. "They are their own worst enemy, in all real sense of the word."

The group had arrived at the house of the farmer's family, and Eric was ushered in first. A simple chair was ample for the witch, though not enough chairs were present for all so he remained standing. "Please, soldier, doff your gear and be at ease," the lady of the house requests. "We would not turn you away for the honor you have shown us."

"You have my thanks," Eric replies. He loosed his backpack and set it down, the mass of material and supply within ample to cause a loud banging sound when it touched the ground. Next he loosed the separate quiver of arrows, of which he was still full from his time and purchases in Gelles, his shield joined the gearpack, the dump sack with the book sandwiched between the shield and the gearpack, and lastly the two broadswords on his left hip. Eric retained his Gladius out of force of habit, something not begrudged him by the others.

"You carry all that, and can still fight?" the son asks.

"To battle I have carried more, and still fought," Eric replies. "This is light, only the absolute bare minimum in supplies and gear, though I will admit I carry more weapons than was my norm months ago."

"Why do you wander?" the younger daughter asks. "A man of your skill could easily find permanent work anywhere you wanted."

"People have asked for my loyalty as a permanent matter, but I do not seek a permanent position. I wander because I am convinced that there is more out there, only to be found by hands willing to take the chance and search the areas others will not go. I am a soldier by trade, but I find I cannot serve only one distinction, not yet at least."

"You're a treasure hunter? Oh, my, that is amazing!" the younger lady stops dead when Eric shakes his head.

"I do not seek treasure. I do not want to be famous. Power or authority mean nothing to me. I just," Eric hesitates for a moment, thinking his phrasing through. "I simply want to learn what my homeland is missing."

"Durgan?" the witch asks. "What is Durgan missing? Yours was a society that had everything any other society would have ever wanted," she asks plaintively.

"No," Eric replies deadpan. "Foremost, from the outside Durgan has the appearance of everything that a sophisticated society would need, but on the inside the people know it is only as effective as the Mayor-General. The current Mayor-General is incompetent, more concerned about family status than military matters, and the slated heir wants nothing to do with the position. Second, Durgan proceeds with innovation only along lines that further their military aims or the duties of the civilians. I am of the belief that there is more to affairs of life than simply servicing the will of the military, and there must be arts outside those walls that are just as honorable and useful but have nothing to further military application."

"It is not much, but please share our bread and meat, travelers," the lady of the household says.

"It is much welcomed," Eric replies. After a bite: "And much better than my cooking," he notes. "So, what is your story?" Eric asks of the lady witch.

"My story...is unwritten," she replies. "You already know part of it, but there is much more that you will need to know, Durgan. And much more I cannot tell."

Eric smiles grimly. "Today seems to be a day for nebulous portents and oblique warnings," he notes. "I will have to look forward to hearing the remainder at that time, I daresay."

"I am truly sorry that I cannot explain further, I really am," she replies.

-x-

(The next morning)

Eric had taken residence on the floor, in lieu of one of the family giving up their beds. Sleep had been forthcoming after Eric talked over a possible next wander direction with the residents of the household, though in their discussion nobody noticed the witch had left until well after sundown. Eric did make clear note that his two broadswords were missing along with the witch, a move not calculated to please him, though his other gear was entirely untouched.

Morning's rays woke him first of the occupants of the household, something he anticipated so he could be off early and be on the road as quickly as possible. Not that he disdained the hospitality, but he knew the life of the wanderer was shorter than most; his clock was running hard and fast, plenty of motivation to get on with it. When Eric stirred, he found himself accompanied by the younger daughter of the family, a lady probably three years younger than he was at a guess. She was sitting at the table, puzzling over a piece of paper.

"Morning," Eric says to her.

"Morning," she replies, still frowning at the page.

"What is so troubling?" Eric asks.

"This makes no sense," she says, waving the page at him. "Your swords are back, but there are two more here that look like yours."

After standing, Eric confirmed what she said about the swords. His two were present, and he returned them to his belt, but the two other swords remained a mystery for a moment. "What does the page say?"

" 'The radiant blue, do not fear it. It is Existence.' Does it make sense to you?"

Eric chuckles grimly, knowing exactly what was meant. "I know what it means in absolute terms, but on this subject I have much more to learn." Eric picks up one of the swords not of his own, and draws an inch of the blade. Both were silent on seeing what was revealed.

"Is that...the radiant blue she meant?" the young lady asks.

"Yes and no," Eric replies immediately. "This is one form of it, I can guess. I think she was referring to something else entirely, though." The sword went back in sheath, and Eric changed around his arrangement of weapons so the new swords were at his left hip and the old swords were on his gearpack, available if needed but out of the way in other circumstances.

"Are you leaving already?" the youngest daughter asks.

"I must get moving, daylight is wasting and I have far to travel." Eric hefts his gearpack and slips into the straps deftly. The book and quiver were attached to his belt, leaving only the shield.

"I really don't want you to go," she says. "I will wait for you," she says completely unexpectedly to Eric, even while helping him into his shield.

"Do not," Eric replies. "It is very unlikely you and I will cross paths in this lifetime again. Best you live your life for yourself, do not concern over me."

"Here," she folds the letter up and stuffs it in with the book in his dump bag. "I will not forget you. What is your name?"

"Eric Atrebas."

-x-x-x-

Eric marched for a week, seeing only the odd traveler or lone merchant cart, nothing like the great merchant convoys seen to the south toward the Greek or Roman headlands. A few farms he passed along the way, nothing spectacular, and with them he traded meats he had shot for breads and vegetables, evening out his diet spectacularly. There were questions raised by his arsenal, but not much in the way of objection. Seeing a heavily-armed loner was not something the average farmer would argue, especially when the condition of his own sword or pike was deplorable at best.

On the ninth day of marching, Eric spoke to a merchant who told of being only a day's travel by fleet foot from an outskirts town, and a week beyond that another major city in the model of Gelles. Eric took this news well, he was having no problem living off the land but the prospect of marching forever into the northeast sky was not thrilling the ex-Durgan. A quick trade of some slain deer for a loaf of bread and Eric was on his way, marching with renewed vigor toward what he believed to be his fate.

Eric caught sight of a marching formation of pikes coming his way down the road, and for hours he closed inexorably with their ranks. Though at first glance it appeared to be a wandering troop, Eric had the feeling that his Greek-style shield and armaments may not be favored in these areas. As they closed to archer's range, Eric figured himself right on that account, the shields and helms he was facing today was that of a troupe he had faced in battle a year prior in the Durgan mercenary lines. They had been soundly defeated and routed long ago, but Eric figured vengeance would be an easy task for them on this day, facing only one Durgan soldier.

"Ah, we have here a fine specimen of the Durgan Bladesmen," their commander declares in a haughty manner. A few chuckles came from his ranks, but nothing sustained. "Separated from your unit, boy?"

"For today, I have no business with you," Eric replies calmly. "I request you keep it that way."

For a moment, it seemed that Eric would be allowed to walk by unharassed, but his foot came into contact with the haft of a pike before he could pass their commander. "I have business with you, knave. I do not forget what your men did to our formation at Three Rivers, nor shall I forgive so easily. War may be only business to you, but it means more to us! Now, draw your sword or face your fate unarmed, your choice."

"As you wish," Eric replies resignedly, hoping he was giving the air of being uninterested in their machinations. The backpack was unhooked from his belt loops and dropped aside, to the sound of a low whistle from some of their ranks for the gear mass carried by one of less physical development. Eric re-tightened his shield and fingered the handle of one of the new broadswords left by the unnamed witch, but decided that the Gladius would be the better choice at the moment. With a standard draw, Eric had his weapon readied and shield braced, awaiting the first strike.

"Use this as a lesson, men, on how to pick apart a Durgan soldier. We will be facing them again in the near future." A chorus of shouts echoed back from the troop, telling Eric that these men were well disciplined.

His erstwhile foe started with a pair of stabs from his sword, a longer weapon than the Gladius but built around the same pattern. Eric gave such tests not a consideration, simply deflecting them aside with his shield. His own thrust was parried in the same fashion, telling Eric that his foe was also capable of maneuvering both sword and shield when necessary. Eric drove forward against his shield to press the issue and hopefully unbalance the foe, but such tactics failed of their own accord just as easily against a larger foe. With defense and offense matched, Eric figured his only option was his reaction speed, ample to defeat most.

"You're good, boy, but your lack of experience works against you," and the fact that the foe backed off slightly was answer enough as to what he meant. For Eric, the intent was dead simple to read and even simpler to counter: with a simple rotate to the counter of the clock, the shield bashed aside a spear aimed at his back, leaving the enemy wide open for a slash as Eric continued rotating on the ball of his left foot. The gladius flashed outward and around, an expertly aimed roundhouse slash against a foe not expecting a dodge or counterattack, and with that simple stroke the head was removed cleanly and the body fell flat to the ground. At the completion of his rotation he was back in position to guard against a renewed offensive from the enemy commander.

"Kill him!" "Kill him slowly!" "Make him bleed!" the chants came up from the crowd of soldiers, reminding Eric that the likelihood he would walk away from this battle was effectively zero. The poorly-aimed thrust of a pike from the left only accentuated the fact.

"He's too green!" their erstwhile leader shouts, driving in with a pair of furious sword-swings intended on taking advantage of his size and strength, not an inherent skill. Despite being able to see through the ploy, Eric had no maneuver options and could not help but take the hits, one against his shield, one against his sword. The second stroke would have been a battle-winner, had Eric not blocked it, but in reverse of fortune the Gladius he carried was dislodged and sent skittering well out of range of a quick retrieval. Two follow-up blows were expertly blocked by Eric's shield, as he reached across for the nearer of his new broadswords.

"By the Gods!" someone behind Eric shouted, apparently after seeing the blade of his new sword. Herein Eric thanked Durgan again for his training in carrying and using more than one class of weapon, as the broadsword came around and met a wild slash by the troupe leader. Surprisingly, Eric's swing did not stop at the clang of blades; the lime-green blade of his broadsword continued through the enemy weapon, with the top two-thirds of the foe's blade continuing to the dusts of the roadbed bereft of the remainder of the sword. The ex-Durgan followed up with a low backhand slash, an attack that chopped mercilessly through the enemy shield and thereafter through both his legs just above the knees. Much as expected, the leader had seconds to scream and flail around on the ground, for with the two largest arteries in the human body cut, he bled out surprisingly fast (1).

"What? Durgan has THOSE?" one of the unit sub-commanders wailed in despair. Eric simply smiled, looking at the enemies over the edge of his shield, with his sword set forward in classic shield-advance form. Of course, he also kept judicious watch on those behind him, a quick peripheral glance left and right every third count to make sure they were not planning anything foolhardy.

"What will you do?" Eric asked finally, after a tense minute used well to rest. "What will you do?" he echoed when nobody responded.

"Like hell we will face Durgan again," the unit second replied. "Boys, we're out of here! And don't touch this man's gear, one dead is enough answer as to what their ranks are capable of."

The grumbles from the ranks were telltale enough that they considered themselves lucky to be ordered to stop. Such fear worked to Eric's advantage, and as necessary would in due time help Durgan appear to be more than they normally were. Even despite being forever banned from his homeland, he would never cease to try to forward its arts.

Eric watched the troupe move on made sure that they were not planning anything nefarious, though he got lucky in that none of the enemy had bows or similar weapons. When they were sufficiently out of sight, Eric reclaimed his gearpack, scoured the deceased troupe commander for coin or jewel, restrung his bow (how the string had been damaged, he was not going to guess), and resumed the trail.

It would be a quiet day of travel to the next town.

-x-x-x-

In this next city, Eric did not immediately take a mercenary contract, mostly because nobody asked. He could sense more than hear that his presence was somewhat unwelcome by both civilian and military; as such, he resolved to remain only two nights: one to rest, and another to prepare for the next leg of his journey with precisely no aim. His only business transaction in town was a second quiver for arrows, and four score arrows to fill both the new and the old quiver.

It was on this second night that Eric remembered the tome that the Wolf and Raven had left in his care. He remembered the clear and conside directions given him by one of the two: _for today, guard this tome, it may yet be the salvation you seek_. Eric laid the book out, still closed, and considered that said orders made no mention of keeping it closed or reading it. Though definitely not the best linguist in Durgan, Eric knew how to read and write respectably, and his innate curiosity of all things worldly eventually overcame his restraint. He opened the book.

Inside, the glyphs were far different from what he expected, though after a fashion he realized that he should have expected what he had seen. The North-men naturally would have a wildly different style of calligraphy than the Greek or Durgan styles. The runes of the first page were illegible in their entirety to Eric, as were the runes of every other page. Resigned to a lack of understanding, Eric made to close the book, but before he did he visually traced the first three lines of the front cover inside, that he would have a good idea what the North-men's symbols looked like should he come across other such documents. In so doing, he activated the runes in question, and the magic embedded in the book in question. It could naught but be magic, Eric realized, as the runes rebuilt themselves from the language of the North to that which he was accustomed, easily the most legible writing he had ever seen in the Durgan tradition.

"For today, guard this tome, it may yet be the salvation you seek," Eric repeated the instructions of note, as much reinforcement of his purpose as it was a delay tactic for his mind to begin processing what he was reading.

"This is...by the Gods," Eric breathed. It was exactly what he thought had to be, evidence that mystic arts were not limited in gender to the ladies.

Eric calmed down from the initial high of having discovered the impossible, and lent his thoughts to the opening verse. Without thinking, he began muttering the text within: " 'I writ this foreword, and enchant the first lines that any who trace the glyphs shall activate the spell and it will translate the entirety of this book to your common language. In compiling this work and driving its development – nay, my development – I have found that I have committed such a grave sin that eventually I will be executed for it. The omens are all present, my death is assured. Unbeknownst how, I have challenged the purposes of certain pantheon of divine beings, and soon I shall face their wrath. Within these pages I have collected many spells, but there are far more that cannot be readily conveyed. Use this tome as a guide and beginning for whatever purpose you construe, but know that mortal man can never challenge the divine.' "

Eric was silent for over a minute. "An interesting lesson. 'In driving my development,' " Eric echoed from the rather succinct foreword. "Would it be that deriving power for the sake of power angers the Gods? Or was he pushing bounds of spellcraft that even the divinities did not like?"

Again, the words of the divine messengers rang in his head: _for today, guard this tome, it may yet be the salvation you seek_. After a moment's contemplation, he tapped on the surface of the table thrice. Still he was muttering to himself, thinking hard and fast: "Okay, this author says he died at the hands of certain pantheon or pantheons of Gods, yet the Gods of the North hand me this volume and say it may be the salvation I seek. Except, right now I do not believe I am seeking salvation so much as I am seeking knowledge of the world, unless the Northern divinities just handed me a divine tasking without so many words," and again Eric taps on the table thrice. "That's it; perchance the divinities of my homeland have contracted my services out to their northern neighbors for some yet-unstated task? Or is something else happening here?"

Eric sat silent for several minutes, considering more than one thing all at once. Finally, he came to two conclusions. Foremost, whatever he was now tasked with, the planning was all well above his level, and he had no idea whatsoever was the overarching intention to which he was now tasked. Second, his orders (such as they were) had been writ in the subtext of the message given him by the messengers. The tome and the contents thereof, meaning the arts of spellcraft, were the key to whatever purpose he was now tasked. Those thoughts in series meant that he had best get on with learning the discipline; Eric considered that Gods may think in terms of decades as short-term planning, but the life of the average mortal man would be lucky to last that long, thus delaying would be counterproductive, possibly even fatal.

That much determined, Eric paged forward to the index of spells in the book. "Well now, where do I begin?" Eric asked himself, though he expected no answer immediately. After a moment, he came to the realization that the great underlying problem at hand was that he knew practically nothing about spellcraft. Sure, he had managed to activate a spell by way of Miri being close to him that one night in weeks past, which told him that the power of spellcraft had to reside inside the person somehow but was available to others in close proximity. How that power was built and trained, though, Eric did not have a clue, and so far the bulk of the tome appeared to be nothing more than a catalog of spells, scant help in solving the standing mystery.

After a modicum of time paging through, looking for any information that might aid in his quest for understanding, he gave up when he reached the rear cover and found nothing of the sort. With a sigh, he flipped back to the first page of actual spells, and rather than just reading the canting of the spell, he touched the text of the spell 'Turn Water to Air'. The opposite page, itself liberally covered with spells, cleared of text at the touch of the spell, and then showed the most vivid depiction of a bowl of water on a table. After a few moments, a hand touched the surface of the water, then a caption depicted the cant of the spell, and then the water disappeared from the bowl. The hand that came from the bowl, partially immersed and should have been dripping wet, even appeared dry in the depiction. When he removed his hand from the text of the spell just shown, the depiction disappeared and the prior spells on that page returned.

"That...well, I can think of a few purposes for such a spell, but an inverse would be most useful," Eric grumbled. After reading down the page, he did indeed find an inverse spell, and upon touching it watched as the same bowl was filled from dry to completely filled with water.

Eric looked to the right of the tome, where a bowl of rather tepid water had been set for him by the innkeeper, ostensibly to wash with had Eric felt brave enough to take a chance on such fouled water. He then looked back to the tome, to the spell that turned water to air, and once again looked to the bowl. "Anything is worth a simple try," he muttered, then pulled the bowl closer to him. Much as in the demonstration, Eric put his hand to the surface of the water, then read out the incantation. "_**The cycle of Nature's movements shall Turn Water to Air**_," Eric chanted evenly and at pace to match the demonstration. His eyes were on the page when he had done so, and thus it took him a moment to realize that his partially-immersed hand was not wet at present.

"Good Gods!" Eric half-shouted, then realized that it was a bit late to be making such racket. "It worked. How, _why_ did it work?" Eric asked the bottom parabola of the now bone-dry bowl, as he lifted it to examine it closely. "Can a book produce or keep a magic aura?" Eric looked to his swords, specifically to the two broadswords: one that glowed azure, another that glowed emerald. "If...if a sword can retain enchantments and aura, and this tome is shown to have retained enchantments, then...is the tome lending me its magic aura?" There was silence again as Eric considered something. "Well, let us see if this trend continues." Eric traced down the page to the inverse spell, then reviewed the expected effect. As the demonstration did, Eric touched two fingers to the rim of the bowl. "_**The cycle of Nature's movements shall Turn Air to Water**_," and once Eric's eyes left the page to inspect the bowl, it was filled to the brim with water, albeit water of more respectable clarity than had initially been in the bowl.

Eric repeated the process several times in succession, first flashing the water in the bowl to air, then flashing the air in the bowl back to water. Each time, the process did exactly as he expected it would have, as it was demonstrated in the pages. The beauty of this basic spell is it had no visual herald at all, water just appeared or disappeared as appropriate, which meant that it could be practiced indefinitely without much risk of drawing attention to himself. By the time exhaustion set in and he could do so no more, Eric realized that he was beginning a long and hard road, easily longer and harder than the roads he walked, for the first two pages of the tome contained twenty incantations each, and the tome threatened a length of hundreds of pages.

The darkness in his room failed to lend a piece of otherwise heartening information to the Durgan Bladesman-turned-Apprentice Mage. Each successive repeat of the process resulted in slightly clearer water than the last; by the time morning rolled around, Eric did not even consider such a variance, he simply packed his gear, had a drink of the acceptably-drinkable water, and was out the door. In the minutes thereafter, Eric's 'tracks' would be covered by a very serious subordinate of the divinities, a Valkyrie, lest someone deduce his ability to generate clean water was some form of witchcraft. The Valkyrie were used to such oddball tasks, and the one assigned this task made not a whit of complaint, she simply emptied the bowl out the window to remove the evidence and was gone from the room with none the wiser.

-x-x-x-

The travel continued north and slightly east, with the denizens of the town all that much happier that Eric was gone from their town without any violence. Likewise, Eric was glad that no person had tried bringing battle to him for some offense he had no part in; once outside the gate, the ex-Durgan soldier breathed easier. Some days, it really was that simple a relief, just being outside the known hostile territory could be all the comfort needed.

On his march, the first day was a quiet affair, spent mostly in the contemplation of his new tasking. He was at the least civil to those few persons he crossed, to prevent undue suspicion on their part, but otherwise he was silent and unobtrusive to those who saw him. Lunch was travel ration, and the basin of a mostly-dead and decayed tree stump to fill with water, well away from the road. Even despite the status of the stump, the water his beginner's spellcraft produced with the assistance of the book and swords was easily the most pure water he had ever seen. That more than else was conviction that wizardry was less demonic than it was useful, in his opinion.

Even with his new skill and new arms, Eric maintained to his old training from Durgan; the end of his night was spent in physical training, and he slept in a dug-in and camouflaged hide just as was always trained to the Durgan soldiers. Such was a prescient move, for in the pre-dawn gloom his location was passed by a group of brigands. The nearest of their ranks passed close enough that Eric could have reached out of his hide and untied the brigand's boot, yet the freelancer did nothing to give away his position. In minutes, the brigands in question were out of his sight, and minutes thereafter they were out of hearing, and none the wiser that they had passed by such a soldier.

Eric's day began an hour later, with his morning exercise and rations, though he added an extra thirty minutes of training in his new art. This morning, his practice was using a pair of small stones and a simple enchantment: "_**The light of stars shall shine through Luminescent Object**_," which lit up the stones, and "_**The light of mystic radiance shall be canceled by Extinguish Light**_," to counteract the prior spell. Because the light of early morning masked the effects of his spellwork, and his orientation to the road concealed the stones he was working on, two groups of merchants that passed nearby his campsite on the road during his training were never the wiser that he was practicing spellcraft.

Out on the road, he began his march just as he had the day prior, much relieved that he was out in neutral territory and the average person had heard of Durgan but were not particularly hostile to him. His march outpaced merchant convoys headed in his direction, the longest of such convoys being over a mile long with wagons and carts, but significantly slower than a guy on foot. Few even spoke to him, but none were hostile. His day ended just the same as it had the day prior, with exercises, sword practice, and then a hide to conceal his presence.

In the creeping glow just before dawn, Eric was first awoken by the sound of one of yesterday's merchant convoys moving through, though it was only minutes before he was back asleep even over the sound of their train moving by. It was less than ten minutes after returning to sleep that he was awoken by the same merchant's cargo train, but this time the offending sound was a call to arms against bandits. The shrieks of ladies among their caravan was enough to jolt him wide awake immediately, and the sound of swords being drawn was brought him to standing with all due urgency. The ex-Durgan bladesman hesitated for only a moment, then picked up his shield and bow to do battle. He had no obligation to any person on the road down the hill from his hide, but he did consider it an obligation to eliminate bandits wherever possible.

His distance to the road was short and quick, though Eric did not enter the convoy. Instead, Eric perched himself in the sparse tree cover on the hill that he had made his hide upon, deliberately sighting himself so he could see and fire over the carts and wagons making up the merchant train. With position taken, it was not hard to see what the sparse guards were crowing about, and how thoroughly the odds were stacked. _Well, that is what the archer's battle is for, to reduce thine enemy's ranks before they can close_, Eric thought with renewed appreciation of his preference in battle.

The bow came up, an arrow nocked, and the Atrebas drew back his first shot of the day. He loosed on a guess, given that the enemy was moving a bit too fast for him to properly gauge their advance speed. The first shot went high, over the lead horseman's head by at least the length of a man, giving Eric instant information as to where his next shot needed to be. There were some shouts from the guards in the convoy (his bow was a loud one), but the fact that he drew a second shot and fired almost immediately was answer enough as to Eric's intent. This shot even found a mark, the arm of the soldier immediately behind the lead, which was ample evidence that Eric had their range and advanced dead to rights.

Eric drew and loosed the third shot, and was rightly stunned by the result. The enemy was a clever one, inasfar as their tactics and purpose, given that they rode single file to better conceal their numbers from investigation of the tracks. This also made the target profile difficult for Eric to track in on, as he was firing at only silhouette of one horseman with a long column behind, instead of a palisade of foes from which he could easily sweep shots down their rank. As such, his third shot missed the lead, missed the first ten horsemen in all reality, but when it struck it did so in the left eye of a mare. The horse was instantly killed by the arrow, but more importantly the single shot also dropped the deceased steed in the path of a column of oncoming horsemen, most of whom were too focused on their target to realize they were about to pile on the corpse of one of their fallen. Half their ranks were tied up in the ghastly accident, the forward riders completely unaware they were now riding alone into battle.

"HUZZAH!" the cries came from the mercenary guards attached to the convoy. "HUZZAH!" they repeated again, before setting pikes to receive the enemy charge.

Eric loosed his fourth shot inside his 'power band', the range at which he was best at providing accurate fire. The shot hit man, a chest wound that caused the rider to fall off his steed. Eric had little doubt the six riders behind him did not realize they had trampled their comrade whatsoever, with the possible exception of the rider immediately behind the slain. The fifth shot was technically a hit, but an ineffective one courtesy of a shield. Before Eric deployed his sixth arrow, he observed the target and what he thought was some kind of shift in their charge, a turn to the left and away from the forest of pikes pointing in their general direction. When they stopped the turn and settled down to straight charge, it did not take him much to realize what they intended. They knew an archer, left unchecked, could ruin their whole expedition (if they considered what they had left as 'salvageable', that is), so they intended to loop around the rear of the caravan and up onto the forested hill where Eric stood.

_Oh shit, think fast, where to_, Eric grilled himself furiously. This was the one thing Durgan made sure never happened, a flanking action by enemy cavalry aimed at the archers, because Durgan valued their archers equal to the front-line troops (unlike the rest of the world's armies, who placed little value on the archers despite their usefulness). The only solace in the area was the convoy itself, there was nowhere else he could go and theoretically escape the wrath of the horsemen scorned, and for damn sure he would never make it back to his hide with his hide intact, so...

_There, the heavy-frame coach with the full roof, that is perfect_, Eric realized. It was the center vehicle of seven in the train, and the roof looked easily stout enough to support one archer while putting him out of range of every horseman-carried weapon except a good spear. Without further consideration, Eric jumped forward and hit the ground running, aiming straight for the coach in question. A good run lent him speed to get to where he needed to be, just as the pikemen were filtering through the wagons to take up new guard positions he arrived at the coach. The teamster assigned to the coach was extremely shocked that Eric would come toward the caravan instead of running away, and even more surprised that Eric climbed up onto the roof of his ride.

"There!" Eric shouted as he drew another arrow and nocked, waiting for their ranks to shear into the turn that would lead them to where he had been. As they began the turn at full pace, a clumsy maneuver even for such practiced ranks, they once again fell predictable to the Durgan-trained archer. His seventh shot was broadside-aspect to their rank, and struck the third horse back from the lead. The curvature of the hill they were on allowed the steed to fall out of the line of advance of the remainder, but the pitched rider slammed headfirst into a tree and moved not a whit again.

"Good Gods, where did you learn to shoot like that, whelp?" one of the pikemen asked.

Eric ignored the question as the horsemen turned in on the right quarter of the convoy, now clearly seeing the archer that was slaying their ranks. It would be the last sight one of their ranks beheld, for the eighth arrow loosed slammed into the bridge of the nose on the fourth rider remaining; the struck warrior let loose a feral screech before sliding off his horse to land under the next horse in line. Even over the sound of the charging hooves, Eric could hear the sickening sound of his ribcage giving way under the steed.

The ninth shot missed the lead rider, but caused him to bring his horse to an rearing stop. The rest of his rank stopped as well, though the lead asserted his position by bringing himself forward to look at the six pikemen and one archer that had brought his brigade of brigands to its knees.

"Archer!" The lead foe shouted. "Will you negotiate a settlement, that no more blood be drawn today?"

Eric released the tension on his bow, that his tenth arrow would not be loosed. "You may depart in peace, and I shall loose no more arrow, or you may charge, and you will depart for Charon's company in crossing the Styx. Those are my terms." Eric replied. (2)

"We are eight horse to your six pike and one bow, soldier. You cannot hope to stop us from getting to you!"

Eric barked a sharp laugh, seeing his bluff for what it was. They had no ranged warfare capabilities; everyone knew they had to get close. "Then I shall disabuse you of your incompetence should you approach to arm's length," and Eric drew enough of his Gladius that the blade could be easily recognized in the dawn's first rays. "My terms are stated, brigand. Choose your fate."

They got the message. The leader was the first to turn away and begin leading his remaining team away from the convoy. After they passed down a small hill northeast of the convoy, they began following the valleys away from the convoy; a few looked back, but all they saw was the one archer standing atop the coach, steadfast in watching them depart.

"Are...are you Apollo?" the teamster asked warily. All eyes were on him from the men and women of the convoy.

"I am but a soldier. They are but defeated for a day." When their ranks dropped out of sight, Eric returned his tenth arrow to quiver and climbed down.

On the ground he was greeted by the master of the train. "Name your price, soldier," he responded simply, much grateful that Eric had stopped the bandits cold.

"Nine arrows if you have any, a ride and ration to your next destination, and one broadsword from the fallen bandits. You may keep the remainder of their gear." Eric replied.

"Done, happily done," the wagon master replied immediately, realizing that Eric was asking for what he would have offered unbidden. "But, do you not want the spoils you have killed?"

"Even Gold coin weighs," Eric replied honestly. "I will get along well enough on the retail of one broadsword, I am mostly low-maintenance," Eric replied fairly. "We made no bargain of service, it would be unfair of a Durgan Bladesman to charge coin for duties never negotiated," he replied to their shock.

"Ah," the wagon master replied, understanding why the soldier in their midst was unwilling to extort for protection. Durgan lived on its reputation as honest and fair mercenary badasses, and without even trying Eric had magnified that image by a good factor this morning. "By the by, how did you know we were being attacked?"

"My camp is partway up that hill," and Eric pointed up the hill from which he came. "In fact, I am yet to break camp or morning meal today. I shall collect my gear and return; raise an alarm if those brigands return, and I will respond."

-x-x-x-

Thus Eric's days would continue for over a month, marching ever farther north, though with an easterly or westerly heading almost at random. Would that one attempted to determine his course, they would find it seemingly as random as it actually was, with the possible exception of the consistent base direction. For all his lack of understanding of what he must do, Eric knew one thing: the lands of the north were the lands that would determine what must be done.

Regardless of the overarching intent to his actions, Eric considered the whole affair to be just as much exploration as it was duty. Durgan's main concern was in ways to improve their lethality and survivability, to which Eric had already found the answer (wizardry). Eric considered, then, that the next phase of improvement for his hometown would be methods that would allow for expansion of the town in both population and economic terms. Shifting to an economic and political model such as the Athenian model would not work, since such a loose command structure simply begged for increased corruption at all levels, but loosening the economic policies in Durgan would go well to increased influence and standard of living.

Three towns had passed in his quest for new techniques and policies. Eric was not blind to the realization that any changes would be difficult to implement and harder to sustain (most Durgan citizens were rather steadfast in their habits), but there was something just plain 'inevitable' about progress that made it both frightening and exhilarating all at once. Still, he pressed on in the collection of information, that some of it would be usable to Durgan in time to come. Eric figured eventually he would stumble across something that changed the paradigm, and did so in such a way that rewrote the rules for the better.

"You would challenge my fletcher's work in such a way?" the merchant Eric was standing in front of asked indignantly, as Eric inspected each arrow he was interested in.

"Not directly, no," Eric replied. The ex-Durgan soldier held up his hand, which was not large or small, but had a well-defined palm. "My life depends on accuracy no worse than the ability to hit a target the size of my palm, first time, every time. For that, the arrows must be excellently aligned, balanced, and properly fletched. I do not challenge your fletcher; on the contrary, so far his are the only arrows in town worth the price." During the speaking, Eric had discarded three and reserved two more for purchase.

"What land do you hail from, soldier? I do not recognize the accent," the merchant asked. "Your sword makes you Roman or Durgan, or an incredibly lucky bandit..."

"Durgan," Eric replied immediately.

"A bit far from home to be operating alone, soldier," he replied honestly.

"When the Mayor-General sends one soldier out on a mission, there is good reason," Eric replied staunchly. "Of that, I can speak no further. Now, I would like the purchase of these arrows," and he showed a trio of gold coins. "Sufficient compense?"

"A pleasure doing business," the merchant replied, who had also thrown in a small quiver to hold the ones that would not fit in his existing pair.

Eric assimilated into the crowd, intent to continue exploring now that his one necessary business transaction was done. This town, with the odd name Budapest, had turned out to be just as civil as Athens but much more densely populated and with more variety of persons. To Eric, just being in their company was a learning experience all in its own, and the gift of wizardry and the ever-so-complex spell for translating languages made the experience that much more enriching.

Unlike most of his prior destinations, this town was not thick with prostitutes. There were a few obvious harlots in attendance of some of the merchants, but they were not doing anything to call direct attention to themselves. Eric figured they were already reserved, so attracting clients was not necessarily a priority. Also unlike prior towns, this one was more a combination land of both merchants and industries, as opposed to exclusively merchant practices. Eric noted that while the price of food was more or less the same, the price of manufactured goods was lower than other towns, and the availability of goods was significantly higher. The 'why' of the matter became all that much clearer when Eric observed a blacksmith bring a bundle of new pikes to a merchant, and the merchant changed signs on all his pikes to a slightly lower price. _Competition drives prices down artificially, but production drives down the price more readily_, Eric thought of what he saw. _Therefore, both would be preferable, would they not? Competition to check profit extortion, and production to make it readily available to all...I think that may be useful for Durgan_, Eric concluded the thought.

In his wandering, Eric traversed most the length of the town's commercial district, and saw the same thing in practice time and time again. He even found a talkative merchant to discuss the matter with, who confirmed Eric's theory, though added to the lesson. "If prices are forced too low, a merchant cannot do business with a reasonable expectation of remaining in business. Profit is the driving force of business, just as it is the driving force of being a mercenary," the Merchant declared.

"My origin is that obvious?" Eric replied.

"Durgan Mercenaries are famous for being ruthless, efficient, and dangerous to anyone in their path. Your sword, shared between those wise-ass Romans and your homeland, is much respected even this far north," he noted. "Faugh! Her again?" the merchant complained, looking past Eric to someone else.

"Who?" Eric turned his head to catch a peripheral glance of who the merchant was speaking of. "Oh, the lady with the curved sword?"

"She is a witch, and if the rumors are correct, a black widow. She has taken a few of the more promising swordsmen from town, and they have not been seen again." he shrugged while Eric took a more thorough appraisal of her. A little shorter than he, though her clothing hid details that would be necessary for a proper appraisal. It was obvious she was of significantly foreign hailing, and her sword matched no killing instrument Eric had ever seen. The long black hair tied up in a loose ponytail only served to throw off any but the most wary or professional eyes.

"This could be trouble, it would appear others have taken a less-than-civil interest in her," Eric noted as the area began thinning of persons who did not have swords.

"She has never drawn that sword, but today may be it," the Merchant replied. "If you value your life, do not go with her, if she asks."

Eric chuckled. "I do not know, something about her does not strike me as the 'black widow' type," Eric replied.

"I have fifty golds says you will never return."

"I have not fifty golds to take that challenge," Eric lied. He had over three hundred in tightly-bound sacks in his bag, but he was not one for gambling such stakes. "Will you settle a bet of ten?"

"Your life, soldier, not mine," the merchant replied. Eric shelled the golds out in question, and received a receipt. "Null the wager if she does not take an interest to you, and I am an honest bookkeeper."

"Pray for me for luck," Eric concluded before he moved closer to the thinned area. It was also the same time a rump posse had formed to quell the lady with the unusual dress and sword.

"You, wench? Where rests my brother?" a 'leader figure' asked of her.

"I know not of whom you speak," she replied in a very thick accent.

"My brother, Wayan, you took him from here to Gods-know where and slayed him! Where is his remains, or do I cut their location out of your hide?"

_He is looking for an excuse to kill_, Eric thought crassly. _What that I would love to give him a lesson in proper manners, but I highly doubt that sword of hers is a decoration_.

"Wayan? Is not dead," she replied immediately. "None that I have recruited have been less than the challenge set to them. I have no business with you." She turned to walk away from them, but before she took even a full pace she stopped, staring directly at Eric. "Are you...Durgan?"

Eric was still looking in the general direction of the pogrom, not at her. "They did not heed your warning," Eric replied simply, wanting to see what she was capable of when pressed.

"Gah!" She half-snarled, her free right hand moving to the hilt of her sword. As she spun to face her assailants, she drew her sword and lent a single stroke all in one fluid motion, and instantly Eric was both exhilarated and shocked all at once. That the sword was able to draw and strike all in one fluid motion was immensely impressive, but the violet afterglow the sword's arc left bespoke enchantments on the sword. The effortlessness that it cleaved man, sword, armor, and shield bespoke both a mastery of the blade and some fairly powerful enchantments. Her follow-up was immediate and again bespoke her mastery, with each slash a precision strike that left no question as to her killing intent. A third slash severed a sword and an arm, where her fourth finished the surviving mobster. After this strike, none remained in swinging distance, and she settled down into a guard stance.

A man next to Eric drew a foot-length dagger, but before he advanced Eric put up a warning hand to stop him. "Do not," Eric ordered.

"What? Why?" he replied angrily.

"Observe," Eric commanded as someone from his left drew a sword and charged. Even with the enemy completely in her blind zone, she effortlessly pirouetted and loosed her swing, the glowing arc of her sword terminating in his waist and leaving his body in two halves on the ground behind her. "Her guard is forward, but her defense is complete. You cannot hope to flank her and expect to survive," Eric pronounced his analysis of her skill with the finality of a death sentence, which is what it amounted to for two more that tried and failed.

"Are you satisfied?" the lady asked, her sword still dripping crimson upon the dusts of the commercial district. "I came here to search for one soldier, nothing more! Why do you assault me?" she asked the crowd plaintively.

"That sword! She's a witch!" someone shouts from behind and to Eric's right.

"She may not be a witch," Eric replied immediately, intent on shutting down such an instant mob action before it began. "An enchanted sword is no indication of magic skills," Eric continued as he stepped forward.

"How do you know this, soldier?" an older guy asked.

"For just exactly that reason, tradesman," Eric replied in kind. "I am a soldier, not a sorcerer, and I carry two magicked blades myself," Eric drew a hand's length of one of his broadswords to demonstrate. "I am a soldier, and I have seen much of land and spellcraft that a tradesman would not. I have encountered over a dozen witches in my travels," which was close but not quite accurate, but such details were unnecessary. "Every witch I have encountered is harmless unless provoked, and at least half of them were totally harmless notwithstanding the circumstance. You can accuse them of whatever you want, but the reality of their trade is far different from the nasty rumors you spread."

There was grumbling among their ranks. "Why should we believe you, solder?"

"You would question the word of a Durgan Bladesman?" Eric asked in sharp retort. "Stand your ground or rescind your challenge, scumdog!"

"Oh shit!" the accuser replied immediately. "I rescind my challenge! Spare me!"

_The merchant was right, the reputation of Durgan does stretch this far north_, Eric realized as practically the whole crowd took a step back from him.

"We should test the witch!" a middle-age lady declared. A few cheered her on, but most were silent.

"I will offer a bloodless compromise," Eric replied. "The lady and I shall depart this town, and I shall even leave compense for a laborer to clean this mess up," and his gesture encompassed the slain pogrom.

This struck a note with the bulk of the crowd. "Two golds, I will see to the deceased," a middle-aged guy replied.

"Please do," Eric handed the man two coin.

The persons between the nearby gate and where Eric stood readily made way for the two to leave, and the guard at the gate gave them no trouble. "How did you—" she began after exiting the town gate.

"Say nothing for two hundred paces," Eric ordered tersely. He did not want anything said to be even remotely within earshot of the townspeople.

"Understood," she replied immediately.

The walking distance incurred was quick to pass. Eric did a quick peripheral check and noted that nobody was following or had a bow visible to take a shot. "It is clear, nobody gives chase," Eric noted after his check.

"You are Eric Atrebas, former Durgan Bladesman, correct?"

"I am," Eric replied. "Who told you this?"

"A mutual acquaintance, a lady whose story is unwritten," the lady replied. "There are some people you should meet, Eric Atrebas. They may even be able to explain the book you have in your dump bag." Her pronunciation was a bit uneven, which told Eric that she had been coached on what to say.

_A messenger, clearly of a land foreign to this area and the North, but in the know. Her swordwork is outstanding, and her blade enchanted though dissimilar to mine. This is either a clever trap or the real thing_, Eric considered. _It would have to be a trap laid by the divinities, though, for it to be of such accuracy. If they were so displeased, then they could already have struck me down for any number of transgression. This...well, the circumstances do not favor a trap, they would not be so blatant about it._

"Lead the way," Eric replied, yet thankful that it had been a while since he had been in battle and incurred injury from it. He knew, though, such a record would not last.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

And still it continues.

This is just the beginning, really, in that the first Set of the Multimage Chronicles (MMC) has much to go before the real action and intrigue begin to take hold. The completely bizarre twists to come, and their attendant rewriting of more than one history, shall prove to be some of the most insane cases of 'chain reaction' ever put to paper. And then it gets to happen all over again...

Herein you are beginning to see that things are starting to twist well out of any semblance of control for the ex-Durgan Bladesman. Not out of choice, but out of necessity are high-level forces taking an interest in Eric, necessities never stated but visible to themselves. Eric's assessment of what is going on is only partially correct, however, in that someone is pulling strings but other parties have not thus far given up their claim to him yet... It may be a while before the bent of that comment comes to light, but keep it in mind for now.

I think I should make clear mention that the spellcraft system I operate under is wildly different from average, and especially wildly different from most RPG systems. I have begun listing the spells and some basic rules that they operate under in the afterword section, but this will definitely not be comprehensive. If you see a spell in prose, look below for prerequisites. For the record, Eric is right about the tome lending him a modicum of power, but the reason why is a lot muddier than even he would guess. It will be thoroughly explained as well, but not for some time to come.

From now on, expect more in the way of spellcraft, but not quite as much as explanation. After all, this is being stage-managed by the Gods, though which ones are doing the management is a bit nebulous at present, and what roles other divinities may have is still up for grabs.

NEXT UP: When Eric stepped out of the town, he stepped into almost a different world, with different priorities and different methods. Now, he chooses between his bleak past and an equally bleak future...

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Review Replies:

Three reviews for this chapter, including one just a few days ago. Given the timing, it's only been about six months...

**Etienne Of The West Wind**: The conduct vis-a-vis witches is really not quite appropriate for pre-Judaism ops like this one, but you are correct about the creative license bit. A little bit of the skewing of the timelines to generate an extra ration of conflict is preferable to a static outcome. The remainder, of course, will come in chapters to come. There are conflicts within conflicts in this story, and they will only become more and more severe as the timeline progresses.

**Knives91**: He did get away today without any serious injuries, but where he is about to head will not be so kind to him.

**Hellhound-D. O. W.**: Much shall happen, as Eric Atrebas is one of those rather unique guys that doesn't take 'no' for an answer from anyone. And he will need that attitude in the stories to come, trust me...

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: None for the past chapter.

Since my beta is apparently off-duty for a month or two, I will be running this story cold UFN. If you spot any errors, please inform me.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): The arteries in question are the Femoral arteries, which run the length of a person's legs on the inside of your thigh. If one of those is severed, a person has pretty much ten seconds to live or thereabouts.

(2): **Charon** is the ferryman of the River Styx, who takes the deceased across the river from the mortal planes to the realm of Hades. The Nightwish Song Planet Hell is specific reference to crossing the River Styx.

* * *

Included Works:

IRL

—The purpose of a sniper is not to kill the enemy outright. Snipers serve many tasks, including intelligence, reconnaissance, analysis, and other purposes. For a sniper in combat, the best option for one person to take down a numerically superior force is to compromise the enemy plan. Eric accomplished this by taking out enough of the enemy that the bandit's raid could not be assured a victory.

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st Edition

—the spells presented in this chapter (complete listing below in the spell catalog) are derivations and modifications of various AD&D spells. Given that these are very low level spells under my system, they have short chants and no material requirements. More complex spells will have longer chants and/or will require material components, making their use far more difficult.

* * *

Spell Catalog:

Herein will be listed a compendium of spellcraft used in the chapter, including pertinent information on minimum requirements to use those spells and what effect a caster can expect when used.

NOTE: MinDR refers to **Min**imum **D**istortion **R**ating, a minimum on a scale of the power of a magic-user. This will be further explained at a later time. Note that the Distortion Rating system is NOT a system of RPG experience, per se, and should not be treated as such.

CIVILIAN WIZARDRY scope

Common Branch:

—Extinguish Light: MinDR of 2.000 (see description for exceptions), no material components required, light source to be extinguished must be magical in nature (this spell will not work on fires, biological luminescence or technological light sources). When used, any magical light sources within a range of 5 yards per 1.0 DR will be extinguished. For light spells, this effect is permanent, ergo to reactivate a light spell a spellcaster would need to re-cast the spell. When used on a luminescent relic, if the caster has less DR than the enchanter of the relic, the spell has no effect, but if the caster exceeds the power in the relic it will cancel the aura luminescence for 1 hour per 1.0 DR of the caster.

—Luminescent Object: MinDR of 1.000, no material components required, user must physically touch the object. This spell will enchant 1 cubic foot of stone material to glow with the power of 10 candles per 1.0 of a caster's DR. Denser materials reduce the volume of material that can be enchanted, and casting the spell on smaller volumes or densities of objects increases the luminescence proportionally (ergo, a 1.0 rated Mage casting this spell on a 1 cubic foot volume of loose feathers would produce about 65 candles luminescence from the feathers, just as one example). The duration of this spell is 100 minutes per 1.0 of DR. Luminescent Object will work on liquids, though if used on a body of moving water (a river or ocean) the affected water is liable to be out of range to provide light in short order.

Materials Branch:

—Turn Air to Water: MinDR of 1.500, no material components required, object to be filled must be in an atmosphere, spellcaster must be touching the object to be filled. This spell will fill the smallest reasonable container the caster is touching with up to 1 gallon of water per every 0.1 of his/her distortion rating. This spell will not overfill a container, but if the container cannot properly hold the volume of water added, it may break. As this is a conjuration-class spell, it is not subject to a time limit once created, though natural evaporation would deplete the water eventually.

—Turn Water To Air: MinDR of 1.250, no material components required, water mass must be in an atmosphere for this spell to work, and spellcaster must physically touch the water to be flashed to air for it to function. This spell will 'flash' a volume of water to air in the quantity of 1 gallon per every 0.1 of a spellcaster's distortion rating. If used on a body of water larger than the spellcaster can modify, it will partially deplete the body of water up to the maximum of his/her ability, unless a modified version of the spell is used to reduce amount affected.


	4. Realization

(04: Realization)

(Present location: outside Training Barracks 4, Durgan City)

Gerard and Stanythe stood watching the latest sparring match between two of the others in their class. With the recent depletion of three from their ranks there were less people to train against, a fact that worried Stan a bit. What worried him more was something more easily voiced: "I miss having someone with real defensive skill to face me," he grumped.

"Indeed," Gerard replied calmly.

The match continued on, both side adept at the offense and the parry, but it just lacked the sheer defensive skill of their departed comrade. "Think he will make it?"

The question was ambiguous enough, and timed to coincide with a well-placed offensive from the weaker of the two trainees, that nobody in earshot gauged its true intent. "No telling," Gerard replied, as the nature of the offensive opened up properly. Within moments, the defender had been brought down because of a single mistake, caught leaning the wrong direction while his foe capitalized on such a blatant mistake.

"Always the same," Stan commented. "Still and all, what can one do but hope that your actions are proper at the end?"

"Heh," Gerard retorted with a smirk. _For damn sure I got a fast one past my father, trying to execute a clearly innocent man on the words of my generation's village prostitute. Wonder what the Gods have to say about deception in the defense of the innocent_?

"Wonder if he's picking anything up," Stan commented after a few moments, and again this comment fell into the ambiguous bracket, given the instructor was grilling both trainees pretty hard.

"Plenty, I hope, else it will all be for naught," Gerard nodded to emphasize his point.

"We will know eventually," a Eurididies trainee replied, not properly understanding what Gerard and Stan were referring to.

"Indeed, we shall," Stan replied with a smirk.

He had no idea how right he was about the matter, though results would be years away.

-x-x-x-

(Present location: North of Budapest)

"Still they do not follow," the lady said almost in a tone of complaint.

"If they are furious enough to follow, they may be intelligent about it and whip up a decent posse on horseback before giving chase."

"You are pessimist," she replied quietly.

"Possibly," Eric replied calmly. "I do not expect it to be easy, or to win every decision I make."

"Have point," she replied.

The march continued on in silence. Of greater interest to Eric, the lady he marched with showed no sign of slowing down or losing attentiveness; two qualities excellent in a traveling soldier. _She may be of the same task as I, a wanderer with little purpose_, he thought. _Or, at least she would be, if she was not delivering messages and recruiting personnel for the divinities_.

"To which divinities is this calling derived?" Eric asked after they were more than a mile away from the town.

"The Gods of the North call for those who can fight, and those who are willing to learn," she replied. Eric could tell it was a prepared answer, but he could not sense any form of deceit behind it.

"I can answer on both calls," Eric replied. His answer generated no response from her.

The silence continued as the two warriors marched north by west now, though Eric began to notice that his escort (for lack of a better term) was paying as much sideways attention to him as he was paying attention to her and the road behind. Another hundred paces, and Eric wasn't sure if her attempted stealth appraisal was personal or professional.

"The day draws to an end," she commented. "We have three days more travel at your pace. Where do we set camp?"

"No, no camp," Eric replied. "With only two people, a camp is an invitation for attack. Do you know how to construct a hide?"

"Never done," she replied.

"A simple lesson, and valuable when traveling in small teams," Eric replied. A stand of thick trees several hundred yards off the road provided the appropriate setting for the hide, even with ample underbrush and fallen limbs to construct the camouflage. A reasonably clear area even gave him enough room to set up a two-person hide. Belatedly, he hoped that the lady was still when asleep, or things could get violent overnight.

Eric produced a small shovel to crater out the area he would need. Carefully, he sketched out the area he would need for his hide (roughly three times his width, to account for his shield and the extra occupant), then with some speed he began cratering out the ground to be involved. The amount of digging was small, since he was modifying a natural depression instead of operating on flat ground, but before he had even completed a third of the earth-moving he had company. His traveling companion had produced her own digging implement, something that looked akin to a dagger, and began clearing out the ground in the area marked.

"No see how this will help," she half-groaned while clearing out the dirt.

"This is only part," Eric replied. With two blades doing the digging, that phase was completed quickly and the excess dirt formed a rim around the bowl of the hide. "Now the camouflage."

Eric loosed his gearpack and took hold of a good-sized fallen tree limb nearby, then dragged it over to the hide. This limb went laterally across the two-person hide, effectively shielding the back half of the hide completely. With a few quick hacks of his belt knife, any limbs stringing down into the crater were removed and mussed to look like they were broken, then added to the top for extended camouflage.

"Ah, understand now," she admitted. Before Eric could even realize her intent, she had darted off into the stand of trees (really a miniature forest) and was unseen or unheard. Shrugging off her sudden enthusiasm, Eric took the time to dump his equipment into the hide and arrange it so it made for somewhat comfortable bedding, then went to get a second major branch for the camouflage cover. The second was more than ample to complete the cover, but a little modification was in order to help conceal the inner contents of the hide.

With a few tweaks Eric decided he would test the efficacy of the hide by using it. He climbed down into the camouflage and mussed up the entry hole, making it appear as if this was simply two branches nearby each other. A few minutes thereafter the lady returned with a few extra branches, and though she was in the right area, the appearance of the hide was enough that she didn't immediately recognize it even standing a yard away from it.

"Where is?" she muttered to herself. "It near log, but..." The problem was simple, there were many tree limbs down in this stand of forest, a woodcutter had not thus far cleaned it out since the last two storms, and the hide was designed to look like nothing so much as a collection of limbs in one area.

"It works, then," Eric replied. The startled squeal she loosed was enough.

"Oh, Ninja!" she replied, almost ecstatic when she realized she was standing next to it. "But...you more Samurai, but hide like incredibly brave ninja." Eric took a few moments to climb out. "Works, didn't notice it until you spoke and saw brass."

"Extra limbs? Scatter around ground," Eric said after he claimed two to finish up the concealment. "Helps conceal the clump of trees and grass."

-x-

_I remind myself: every time I think I have seen it all, I see a new one_, Eric thought without even moving appreciably.

To start the day's misadventures, daybreak had come with an ominous sound: people approaching. A group of brigands, given their coarse language and description of deeds, had alighted upon the large fallen log nearby the hide site. Eric was unsure if this was good luck on their part or bad luck on his; with such a short range, deploying any more than one bow shot would have been impossible. More to the point, Eric could see six, and suspected at least eight in their ranks; less than favorable odds given the close quarters. The only good thing about their ministrations and location was that they faced away from the hide, and had thus far not disturbed it looking for firewood.

Though less threatening than amusing, the second thing and a new one to him was the present state of his escort. Somehow, the fact that she had curled herself around her curved sword turned out to strengthen Eric's appraisal of her, not diminish it. Such a pose would have looked incredibly adorable, almost endearing, had he not known her murderous skill with said blade. In such stature, Eric could only guess that her age was about two, three years above him, though her mental state was a little beyond that. She truly lived by the blade and had no desire to relinquish it, even in her sleep.

The sound of a broken branch nearby startled her awake, though she was soundless in rousing. Eric gave a hand sign to be quiet, to which she nodded. The lady heard the movement of those around her, and with a very careful look examined the six on the log. She looked down to Eric again, and he gestured he thought eight in the area.

Apparently, that appraisal changed the calculus of the matter as far as she was concerned. She gestured four to him, then four to herself. Eric figured four was doable, given the magic swords they both possessed. Eric gestured three, then up, indicating a countdown to go, to which she nodded. The countdown was a formality to ensure they acted immediately and in synchronization, that the enemy would not have time to react before they incurred the most casualties immediately.

On the count of three, both bolted from their place of hiding; in so doing they made a huge racket by jumping through the hide branches, but with only a yard separating the concealment and the log seats the surprise was total. Eric went for the two on the log to the left, leaving the other three in that vulnerable position; a single stroke with his green blade chopped through both of the left-separated pair, one below the shoulders, the other at the neck and left arm. The results on her side of the log were just as dramatic; one stroke, three kills before the blood even hit the ground.

Eric moved further left, where one of the brigands was smart enough to retain his sword even after his night's ministrations. Nothing major, just a broadsword ill-suited to defend against a magicked blade; the weapon was reduced from a broadsword to a short sword in two strokes, then down to less than a good knife's length with one more. The enemy stumbled backwards as Eric advanced forward, and with a simple backhand stroke was bereft of his head and both hands.

"Runner!" the lady shouted.

"Bow!" Eric replied; both went for the bow, though the lady arrived first and pulled it clear of the camouflage. It did not take her long to get a shot set up and loosed, though Eric figured the miss was obligatory. The error was all wind and easily corrected. "Wind! Two feet left, shoot!" The second arrow did not miss. The Brigand let out a startled yelp, though the location of the shot left not much hope for him. Center-right in his back, slightly above the kidney, Eric figured he would bleed out before the travelers broke camp.

"Done," she replied.

Eric simply nodded. "Salvage the brigands for coin, rations or interesting items. We depart before another hand's rise of the sun."

-x-

Two days passed much as Eric expected, quiet and uneventful but long on marching. Eric had lived with long and hard drilling throughout his life, though the pace set by the lady he traveled with far outstripped even the expectations of horse-mounted infantry. By the end of the second day, Eric was feeling beat up and run down from the alternating running and marching.

Each night they prepared a hide in the fashion of the first, and each morning they awoke and practiced their bladecraft for a solid hour before they departed on the march. And each morning, Eric observed the same thing as the morn with the brigands: his traveling companion veritably wrapped around her sword, sometimes muttering in her sleep. The only downside of the arrangement was that he could not understand her natively; her mutterings were in her native language. All things considered, it would not be a sight that Eric forgot in his lifetime.

During the evening of the third day, she finally asked. "Why you seek magic?"

"I wanted to take that skill back to Durgan, my homeland," Eric replied. "I can't return there, not as I am now. I must become better before I can return and pass my skills along." He hesitated. "Then, a month ago, I received this," and Eric pulled the book from his drop-pouch. "I realized the Gods – some of the Gods, that is – may have a different purpose for me. If so, I hope I can do what must be done."

"Ah," she replied, realizing why she had been sent for one soldier rather than a group of acceptable recruits. This one really was special, if the Gods had some kind of plan for him.

"Why do you sleep curled around your sword?" Eric asked. The shock in her eyes was answer enough, she had understood the question because Eric had made sure he was operating under a translation spell. Though it seemed he was speaking Greek, he knew he would be speaking her native language at least to her.

"I – I – I can't be what wish to be," she replied after a significant amount of hesitation. "Want to serve the Emperor as a guard, but ladies cannot be soldiers."

"Your bladecraft says otherwise," Eric replied simply. That caused her to look up from the fire, almost with a smile, but it did not last.

"Father even had this sword prepared for me. He was Daimyo, a servant of the Emperor, and was assured could serve as one of the Emperor's guards. Was denied even the duties of a geisha. In disgrace, fled my lands, vowing never to return until was the best with a sword in the world. A lady met me on the shores of the main-lands, and was brought here to train with many others."

"Two who cannot return home," Eric noted. "What stops you from advancing?"

"Hesitation," she replied evenly. "Even if advanced skills, may not be able to do anything with them."

"Then find someone else to serve," Eric replied evenly. The sharp look was response enough. "I was kicked out of Durgan for being effectively too good for the Mayor-General's taste. Now I serve as a by-contract shocktrooper, or in this case a pawn of the Gods. Even though I have little chance of ever seeing Durgan again, of seeing my friends and comrades again, I serve my present employer without hesitation. I have not the time to feel sorry for myself, I have duties to attend and battles to be fought."

"Logic in your reasons," she replied. "Will you ever enchant your short sword? Your Gladius?"

"No," Eric replied immediately. "This is a reminder of where I came from, and in all reality there are better swords. Yours for example," Eric replied, pointing to the pommel of her blade.

"It is mostly dependent on the hands that hold the blade," she replied. "I would be terrified to challenge a Durgan soldier with only a katana, the shield and sword are more than enough to resist my bladecraft."

_You sell yourself short_, Eric though but did not say aloud. He figured he would be frightened to face off against anyone swinging a katana, shield and armor or not. "Rest for tonight. Tomorrow, we will work on how to fight a shielded opponent." This brought to mind a question that had been nagging the Durgan Bladesman since he met the lady, though only now did he decide to put voice to it. "What is your name?"

"Name?" she asked in reply. "Shiori," she replied after a moment's hesitation.

-x-x-x-

The following day had seen their arrival at camp, though it was late in the evening and most activity had died down. Eric was assigned a bunk in the longhouse, told to rest well and eat hearty, tomorrow would be a hell of a day for him. Eric had done all of the above with strict attention to detail, because he knew that when an instructor said something was going to be hell, they generally were not joking.

The morning had come unexpected, though Eric was the first out of the longhouse for morning warm-ups and blade practice. An hour of solo archery practice went surprisingly well; despite the lack of routine training on the bow, Eric's aim had not degenerated significantly.

"You may be the first to enter this camp that I do not have to disabuse of a disdain on long-range combat skills." The haunting voice sounded nothing so much like an instructor of combat as it did a stern lady in a town. "_**Reset Archery Targets**_," she canted, which dropped Eric's arrows in a pile at his feet and rearranged the targets on both distance and location. "This range is enchanted. All you must do is use that command phrase and your challenge will be changed. You will need to keep your distance combat skills sharp, Atrebas, for you will be going places such skills are the common form of war."

The slight glow behind her as she moved told enough tale as to who she was. A faint hint of aurora borealis followed her every move, a trait attributed to only one group. "You are Valkyrie?" Eric asked.

"No longer," she replied. "The Valkyrie are only concerned with the dead and the dying. Something has to be done with the living to help stave the war Ragnarok, or nobody will win that conflict. We are now called Rune Maidens, and are divorced of the Valkyrie by orders of the All-Father."

"Is that to be my purpose?" Eric asked as he drew back another shot. "Am I to help prosecute the war between Gods and Giants?"

"I do not believe so," the former Valkyrie replied. "Were such the case, the Norns would not be taking interest in you. Yours would be a higher purpose, given interest and involvement above you." She blanched in her speech when Eric dropped his shot into the farthest target away from him. 9-ring at 150 yards was easily a kill.

"Then what are my orders, milady?" Eric asked calmly, again drawing back another shot.

"I am to train you in all forms of wizardry while sharpening your skills in blades, ranged combat, and most of all in thought and process." Eric's shot was significantly off, a four-ring low hit on a mid-range target.

"Thought and process?" Eric replied, looking to her in something resembling shock.

"You must understand not just battle, Atrebas. You must understand Existence," she concluded. "To understand Existence, you must understand how to think. I will teach you the mastery of this," and she waved a broadsword in his direction, "after I have taught you how to use this," and the index finger to the forehead answered enough question on that subject.

"Understood," Eric replied before he snapped off another shot. This one did not miss the mark at fifty yards.

"Thankfully, Durgan warriors are largely training in understanding, as part of your ongoing training in the art of mercenary warfare. You are a cut above your comrades in that department, which is probably why you were called upon for this duty. I was particularly impressed with your use of traps and pitfalls at Le Sanc three years ago, your team prevented the enemy from attacking the right flank of the Bladesmen with a fast night's spadework."

"That was hardly a challenge," Eric replied diffidently before he loosed another shot. "I knew how the enemy would react to our presence, and planned traps accordingly. I cannot be credited for a predictable enemy," he admitted fairly.

"You can be credited for taking advantage of a foe's ineptitude," the lady replied. "And that shall be the crux of your training. You will learn how to understand any situation you encounter, and how to turn them to your advantage – or to advantage of those you will serve. To that skill you will bring your extensive martial training, and we shall add training in wizard's disciplines."

"Where do I begin?" Eric asked after his latest shot.

"You still possess the tome that was left in your care?" she asked.

"It is in my drop-bag in my equipment bin," Eric replied. Normally he kept it with him, but not this morning. This was knowing company; the chance someone would run off with it was low at worst, nonexistent at best.

"From waking until lunch, you will hone your combat skills," she said. "Lunch to dinner, you will practice spellcraft. Dinner until evening, you will learn on a great many subjects, and you will learn how to understand that which cannot be taught. Then you will sleep and repeat; this will continue until I see a need to change the schedule. Understood, Atrebas?"

"Yes, milady," Eric replied dutifully.

"Additionally I will be assigning you special tasks and operations with certain other persons, to help round out your training. Some will be combat duties, others will be noncombat, reconnaissance or raiding missions. You were never considered for a team leader position in Durgan for political reasons, but you proved your acumen working with the merchant's guards months ago. Time to sharpen those skills is fast approaching. What tasks await you cannot be done alone."

That fact worried Eric to an extent. If whatever he was assigned to do was of such threat as to require team operations, Eric figured things would truly be nightmarish even if he was to be expertly-trained in wizardry. After a moment's contemplation, he rightly figured that any nightmare he could imagine might not be of sufficient caliber to truly encompass what he would be facing at the behest of the Gods. Such a thought brought him to a segue, a different issue he had been mulling over for some time.

"I know there are Greek Gods and Norse Gods, but are there others?" Eric asked in the silence between shots.

"There are many other groups of Gods, each as powerful as the Greeks, many of them being more powerful. Of their ranks you will learn as well; we work with the denizens of the entire world, and all their deities."

"My hands are yours to command milady," Eric concluded. He figured this would be a greater challenge than ever he had faced, but someone somewhere was counting on his success. Whatever that success entailed.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 1 year 6 months after departure from Durgan)

"You will not escape again!" Shiori shouted over the din of others trying to capture the Durgan Bladesman.

"Not in my operations plan!" Eric barked in retort, shifting direction slightly to ensure his massive shield was between himself and the lady Samurai.

Even despite the hard daily training that rivaled a Spartan's training, Eric's speed had topped out at only slightly better than when he marched into camp. The Rune Maidens said it best: some people are not meant to run, but to hold their ground. Eric took the lesson to heart and put aside any thoughts of fleeing onslaught henceforth; he would stand to his duties, not run to them or run away from them. The Durgan-trained bladesman maintained a healthy tactical movement training, but instead focused on rock-solid defense to make up for what his inability to flee could not avoid.

This was one such incident. Eric had traded in the old laminated-wood-brass-covered-and-leather-padded Durgan scutum-style shield for a slightly larger enchanted iron circular shield. The enchantments reduced the shield's weight to just more than his Durgan shield, but the solid inch of iron and defensive enchantments attached to the shield increased his resistance to any form of attack (even some magic attacks) to practical invulnerability. This, combined with Spartan training in use of the shield as both an offense and a defense made him almost the best blade warrior in the camp, and natively the best archer among said ranks.

This solid defense was matched against a bizarre and stark contrast of a foe. From their first meeting, Eric had been stunned and slightly shocked at the sheer agility of the Samurai lady. Even with a few more years on her slender frame, her strength had not appreciably increased. Eric expected as much, she was more styled as a maneuver trooper than as a direct combatant. The hard year of training had conditioned her in two ways rather alarming to the Durgan warrior, a product of the first lesson she received in fighting a heavily-defended foe. While her strength had not markedly improved, Shiori's agility and endurance had multiplied by at least a factor of two in counter to Eric's increasing defensive acumen. To accentuate this difference, she typically wore very modest armor, only a cuirass enchanted to practically no weight to prevent any loss of speed or mobility. This combination, she found, was the only way she could bypass the shield of the Durgan or Spartan and attack less-defended areas; even that was far from guaranteed, she lost more sparring matches against the Durgan than she won.

However, Shiori had the most inventive ways to misuse her agility and speed when her temper overcame her battle logic.

"Not again!" She shouted once more, and this time Eric knew what she was intending from her proximity and speed. The Durgan soldier brought himself to a skidding stop as she became airborne, sword held high to hopefully bring it down on his head or shoulders. The long, low dash-jump put her even with the top rim of his shield, so he did what seemed like the best idea at the time: charge into her jump. The timing was right, the collision horrendous for both, but expected for the Durgan and not the Samurai. The rattling echo of first her sword hitting the top of the shield, followed by her body, was answer enough as to how well that part of the pursuit ended.

A quick swing of the wooden sword removed her wooden sword from hand; a jab to the sternum signified a kill shot. "Down," Eric ordered, since he met the guidelines of a 'kill' for this training exercise. She simply grunted and laid back to rest from the run.

A viking war chant drew Eric's attention to the less speedy elements of the pursuit unit. Wooden spears and swords were raised high as they finally noticed Eric had stopped moving, though they were less pleased when he set shield and charged back at them. The size of his shield gave him the ramming surface to hammer two men at once, though this usually resulted in Eric taking the fall rather than the two enemies. The Durgan Bladesman targeted just one and drove in hard, expecting a hellish hit. The resounding crash sounded like it broke bones on the targeted warrior, but that was one thing among many wizardry was good for.

_Use your spells_, Eric was ordered by the Rune Maiden by way of telepathy. _Do battle with all your skills, take no chances in your survival_, she continued the lesson.

"_**Smoke Wall**_," Eric completed a delayed-chant spell. Immediately, the ground around him for dozens of yards in every direction smoked thick and heavy, a haze that limited vision to less than a yard's distance in less than five seconds passage. The trick of delayed casting was a subset of wizardry, commonly used in combat spellcraft: a spell could be mostly-chanted except for the final activation phrase, allowing a caster to do battle with spells without having to take seconds or even minutes to run through the lengthy full chant. Multiple spells could even be 'stored' in such fashion, and thus far Eric had not found an upper limit to the amount of different spells he could prepare in that fashion. The downsides to such skill, however, were extremely simple: used once, a spell would have to be full-length chanted if needed again, and many spells could not be pre-chanted.

Eric simply waited for someone to wise up on the other side of the battle, though he judged it would be a significant wait. Few of the trainees at this camp were well versed in operational logic as of yet; others would simply want to close and engage Eric before just moving out of the haze. The combination of impaired visibility and extreme aggression (Eric had to be close, they figured) led to what Eric rightly expected.

"You're down!"

"Hey, numbskull, I'm on your side!"

"Ow! Who stabbed my arse?"

"That was my head you just slammed!"

"Where is that Durgan bastard?"

"What manner of insult is this?"

"We're killing each other off!"

"_**Gale Gust**_," the Celt battle-mage finished his counter to Eric's smoke wall. When the haze blew clear, Eric and three others were still standing. "We failed to get the Durgan in that chaos? Faugh!"

"Dirty trickery!" a Viking half-shouted.

"In war, there is no fair fight," Eric replied. "Only fights you win or lose." The Durgan soldier set his shield and charged the Celt, easily the most dangerous of his remaining foes.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 3 years 9 months after departure from Durgan)

"Okay, the problem with what you just presented is a difference between strategic and combat mobility," Eric countered. "Infantry can be fast on their feet, but from a strategic standpoint lack the speed of mounted infantry or cavalry forces," he continued. "As such, it is technically feasible to attack their logistic lines with cavalry, and to fade your forces when the infantry turns around to engage the raiders in their rear." He illustrated the intent in a sand table, using broad strokes for the otherwise non-detailed discourse. "This is common practice among Durgan forces, especially against numerically superior forces. Hit their logistics, then when the foe turns to attack the cav, hit their rear with a weighted infantry assault. When the force turns again to face the Bladesmen, hit their rear and flanks again with the cavalry. Done on prepared ground, the cavalry or infantry can suck the enemy into trapped areas and diminish both numbers and morale with only a modest outlay of effort, equipment and personnel."

"And how would you counter enemy archers?" the Rune Maiden asked fairly.

"Counter-battery fire, provided I had archers or similar ranged combatants capable to the task. Without such range advantage, I would use cavalry or skirmishing infantry to close and assault the archers separate from the enemy's main body. Same with enemy siege weapons, such as the Roman Scorpion teams. Enemy cavalry forces present a problem, and are traditionally the weakness of Durgan troops," he admitted. "However, assuming I have spellcraft as an option, reducing or eliminating cavalry is a fairly simple task; horses can't take much abuse before becoming combat ineffective. Assuming I do not have spellcraft as an option, archers are my preference, followed by my own cavalry forces, and lastly infantry in phalanx with long pikes."

"Does he pass this lesson?" a voice somewhat familiar to Eric asked.

"I don't see a way around his planning," the Rune Maiden replied. "Multistage assault plans using terrain, traps, forces, and enemy intentions. Three years, would you believe?"

"I expected as much," the newcomer replied evenly. "It has been a while, Eric Atrebas," she noted after taking a seat on the other side of the sand table.

"A few years, milady," Eric allowed. "Is your story still unwritten?" Eric asked, continuing a line of conversation started not long after Eric left Durgan.

"It shall remain unwritten for many years to come," she replied evenly. "I will finish this evening, Rune Maiden. Please rest 'till the morrow."

"Thank you, Milady," the Rune Maiden left the table without further word.

"They try, but the task they take may be impossible, even with the many other things we attempt," the lady said.

"If I may, how do I fit into the grand scheme of things?" Eric asked plainly, though without any hostility.

"The tree Yggdrasil grows old and feeble," she noted. "Soon, its life force will diminish to the point that it can no longer hold the Fimbulwinter at bay. At that point, the Giants will ride out from their mountain dwellings, and challenge the Gods for one final orgasm of battle."

"And then, upon the Days of Ragnarok, all living beings of consequence will be annihilated," Eric completed the logic of her statement. "That would make you Verthandi, much as I guessed possible those many years ago. And that leaves question as to what I may do to assist preventing this tragedy," he returned to his original inquiry.

"There are a great deal many problems in Existence, Eric," she replied. "The compounding of these numerous errors speeds up the process by which Yggdrasil depletes itself. We Norns can challenge some, but we are not truly divine beings such as you understand the term. We have little in the way of ability to solve problems; we can only tell you what those problems are, and what the history or future around them shall be. As such, we have gone about Existence, gathering people willing to challenge the status quo and possibly correct a few of the problems that are within their purview."

Eric's training in logic caught clearly what she was referring to, though immediately he could sense something else was afoot. "I gather that is your intention for everyone here, excepting me?"

"Oh yes," she replied, quietly ecstatic that Eric had seen through that logic trap. "We Fates have severe limitations; problems exist that even we cannot grasp because of our limited purview and skills. Thus, we also must try to get people, forces to operations that can properly understand the high-level machinations of Existence and are willing to act on those levels, detailing skilled subordinates to handle lesser problems. Only then can we begin to reverse the troubles plaguing the Yggdrasil and thereafter the rest of life itself."

"Oh my," Eric replied. "But why me?" Eric asked after a moment's pause.

"Were I to explain that, the answer would be to your detriment," she replied evenly. That alone did not make Eric feel good about the coming trials. "Were there another way, I would not be asking you to do this. What will result will be a very long and very difficult challenge, only to be followed by another long and arduous challenge, and another, and another, and so on until the matter is settled one way or the other. Based on that alone, and the fact that I cannot tell you much of what is to come, will you continue?"

Eric opened his mouth to answer, though silenced himself before he replied as he felt. It was a few seconds before he finally did say anything: "I have two questions," he began, but was silenced by a raised hand.

"The price of walking away is simple: at some time not far into the future, you will be killed in a hopeless battle, trying desperately to save your old Durgan comrades from the machinations of someone you will have cause to hate. Even with your superior tactics and blossoming wizardry skills, you cannot defeat the lady you would challenge at that time. What the book said is quite true: a mortal cannot defeat a God or Goddess in conventional terms."

_Oh shit_, he thought. _I would challenge a goddess? That is madness_! Eric thought but did not say.

"The price of failure is a little more direct, and a lot bloodier, but even a partial failure changes the outcome in ways my sisters and I cannot determine. When you accepted the call to action by the All-Father, you already changed the outcome of the Days of Ragnarok; it was not enough to prevent it, but more people would live longer before that sad day. As such, we believe a conventional victory is impossible, but again we are limited in scope; you may be able to find a way to win of your own right, or you may find someone who can find such a victory. Even if you fail, so long as you try, you will improve things for some time to come."

"If I try, more people live longer," Eric repeated the crux of her logic. "Will it be better for them?"

"Some, yes, others, maybe. Again, we can only see the most narrow of focus on this matter, we cannot truly encompass what you and your subordinates would be doing."

That more than else put an exclamation point on the whole 'bigger scale' schtick than even Eric expected. His actions would have to be so significant as to outstrip the Fates and their ability to even understand what he was doing. Eric could come up with no way such would be possible, though he figured he would find out the answer sometime. The fact that she had deliberately not referenced how long it would take also changed the relative time factor involved. This duty was not going to be something handled in a decade, it had to reach beyond such a pittance as ten years. Hell, Eric thoroughly expected to still be training in a decade, much less doing anything useful.

"Your assumption is correct, Eric," Verthandi replied to his unstated musings. "You are looking at factors of time well beyond what the average mortal would expect. Much like a stone cast into water, the actions started now spread far and wide with time, and that is the crux of the intent. Actions taken now, or in a relative 'now' to come, will change the future we are fated. Some changes will be good, others bad. I trust you can determine which is which."

"Understood," Eric replied, even despite the fact that he did not completely understand. "I have much still to learn."

"Everyone in Existence has much to learn," she replied. "You are willing, most are not."

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 5 years 3 months after departure from Durgan)

"This is commonly what the Rune Maidens send you to do?" the Spartan asked.

"This is one of the tasks," Eric replied evenly. It was not the easiest tasking, but Eric's continuing stealth training was ample to the task.

"It is Ninja job," Shiori noted.

"Oh, I know these dogs," Eric said after a second. "They struck me as familiar, but now I know assuredly. They are a mercenary band I fought at Three Rivers, about eight years past. They broke faster than the rest of the line, convinced there would be no profit in fighting Durgan. We need to apprise what their purpose is."

"I will handle it," the Celt replied. "Remain here. This may take some time."

Wisely, the Celt moved laterally around the perimeter of the enemy encampment to avoid drawing attention to the rest of the team. "It is wise go alone?" Shiori asked.

"He is the least likely to draw suspicion among us," Eric replied. "Spartans don't leave Sparta unless campaigning, your order are veritably unknown around here, and I am probably the subject of their campaign."

"Ah," Shiori replied, understanding why Eric had let the Celt go in alone.

"Hail in camp! May a Druid enter?" the Celt shouted loud enough to be heard back to the recon position.

"Come in, traveler!" someone inside replied in the moments thereafter. Sight of the Celt was lost, regained, lost again, regained again, and finally permanently lost as he entered a tent.

"Bad form, we cannot support him from here," the Spartan noted.

"Good cover for his deception, however. If he wanted to remain outside, it would draw suspicion," Eric replied in a low whisper.

The Spartan grunted quietly in response, due to the possible approach of a wandering soldier looking for a tree to whizz on.

"Shiori," Eric ordered, indicating the wanderer.

"_**Sleep**_," she completed a spell chant, and after a moment the targeted wanderer fell to the ground unconscious.

"Aww, bullshit!" someone in the distance shouted. "Gods-damned drunkard! Hey, gimme a hand getting this pissant back into camp."

"Oh, shit," the Spartan grumbled. Four persons were moving practically straight toward the concealed area the observers were in.

"Remember, we are concealed with partial invisibility. They may never see us if you remain still."

The others with Eric did as ordered; the first few times they had ventured out in small team assignments, hotter heads had prevailed and one operation went completely to shit. Those few who had survived decided that maybe the Durgan expatriate had a clue what he was talking about and should be listened to. Subsequent operations had gone almost completely smoothly, and there was no further question as to why the Rune Maidens assigned him the hardest tasks or the leadership positions.

Much as Eric surmised, the invisibility spell they were operating under rendered them effectively invisible to the less-than-observant mercenaries. There was some complaining about the fact that the 'pissant' had well and truly knocked himself cold, and some question as to whether he had mushed his brain on landing, but not one peep was said about the presence of the spies. After fifteen seconds: "You can breathe now," Eric said quietly.

"Hope we move soon, to base or to battle," Shiori grumped.

"Patience, let us see what the Celt has found," Eric reproached her softly.

The wait was not overlong. The Celt had run out of the tent, shouting multiple profanities in his native language while two guys chased him with drawn daggers. "What the Hades?" the Spartan asked nobody in particular.

"I don't know, but I am not about to wait for an explanation." The likelihood that the Celt had done something to antagonize the enemies was significant, but Eric didn't want to leave him flapping in the winds. Good battle-mages were so hard to come by... "Shiori, you take down the trailing soldier," Eric ordered as he drew back his bow with a single arrow.

"Shall do," she replied as she began drawing back her own bow, a traditional Japanese Yumi.

"Loose!" the Spartan ordered, allowing them to both shoot at once instead of one leading the other.

The two arrows struck almost at the same time; both were fatal shots. The attacks, however, had given away Eric's position readily, if not visually then by sound. "_**Fireball**_!" Eric completed the chant on one of his more destructive combat spells, an explosive monster of an attack that could rip up a large encampment when done right. This one did not have that much destructive power, just enough to flatten four of the seven tents in the encampment and kill over two-thirds of the personnel.

The downside of this was the immediate dissolution of their invisibility. This was less of a concern to Eric, who had planned for a 'go to Hades' contingency in this operation. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy in a massive Fireball**_!" Eric chanted the full-length version of the spell, aiming at the other half of the encampment, which was now just coming alive due to the roaring blast that had flattened the remainder. Though most were awake, few even had a remote guess as to what happened, and none had an inkling of their demise even as the world flashed orange-white before the blast claimed their physical forms.

Only four mercenaries remained alive, two wounded from flying debris. One had witnessed Eric in action on the second spell. "BY THE GODS! HE'S A WIZARD! RUN!"

"Should?" Shiori indicated an arrow to the runner.

"Not necessary."

"Bloody hell, what kept you?" the Celt asked after he returned to the observation post. "I damn near got skinned by those barbarians!"

"I would ask you the same thing," Eric replied dryly. "What did you find out before I flattened their encampment?"

"Well, Mother Nature isn't happy about all the wanton destruction you just caused," the Druid/Battle-Mage replied. "They were indeed out to destroy our order, but more than that, they're cannibals. They wanted to try me, see if I tasted any different from the local fare," he groused. "No word on who hired them or why."

Eric shuddered. "They are dead cannibals now. Make sure of it. As usual, salvage any gold or interesting materials, but do not salvage surviving rations."

The sound of four blades being drawn was only the beginning of the end of this cannibal mercenary unit.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 6 years 9 months after departure from Durgan)

"This is bizarre," the Celt grumbled.

"It is good training," Eric replied evenly, then loosed his arrow. The shot grazed the side of one target, but slammed into the 9-ring of a target behind it another twenty yards.

"How can you possibly gauge where your shot is going to land?" a new recruit asked.

"Practice, boy, a lifetime of practice. In Durgan, I was one of the best with the bow, and I work hard to maintain that ranking," Eric replied simply.

Others were taking their shots, but few were even coming close to striking their intended target. Eric loosed another shot, this one completely missed any target but was marginally closer than the average.

The targets were hovering above the ground, darting back and forth at random intervals and speeds, in an effort to simulate a moving foe. Eric groused that if a foe was moving in such speeds and patterns, it would take a weapon unimaginably faster and more powerful to reliably silence it. The Rune Maidens had truly made the practice more difficult, which honed the skills of the myriad of new recruits coming into the order. Ranged combat was to be valued equal to close combat, and Eric was already proficient at both, so when not practicing his own skills he trained the new whelps with their skills.

All things considered, weeding out deadwood was less of an issue for the Rune Maidens than most 'armies' would consider necessary, even in Durgan. The recruiters put every applicant to a test of logic and skills; those who could not pass the simple logic requirements were not even allowed to test for basic combat aptitude, and only those who completed both challenges would be brought along. Thus, the persons training with Eric all possessed a modicum of intellectual skill, necessary for spellcraft combat, and all retained hand-to-hand combat or similar training. That each was younger than Eric seemed an anomaly, but Eric reminded himself that he was younger than most of the more veteran recruits in the organization.

"You must aim ahead of the direction of travel for the target," Eric informed them, then loosed his shot. It struck the intended target, though not well. "Gauge how far and fast the target moves, then put your arrow where the target shall be, not where the target is now," he said.

There were gasps among those on the firing line. "Basic wisdom," the Celt replied before he loosed his own shot. It nicked the leading edge of the target he was aiming for, which told of just a bit too much lead.

"And requiring basic practice," the Spartan replied. He was throwing javelin at shorter-range targets, and hitting once in five attacks or so, hardly an unexpected result with javelins.

"I have spells for longer-range combat," the Celt grumped. "What say you, Durgan?"

"Both," Eric dropped another arrow into another target, this one a center-mass strike that caused the target to stop maneuvering and land. "Both have strengths and both have weaknesses," Eric commented further while nocking another arrow. "In Durgan, flexibility is key. You learn to fight at every range, from aimed arrow shots at hundreds of paces to shield-checks and kidney daggers in close. War does not often allow you to choose the circumstances of battle, thus you must be prepared to fight at every range, against extended odds, and in any weather."

The shots continued in silence as the recruits did their daily ranged combat training. Eric did best among the shooters, with four targets brought to ground, though nobody could claim to do exceptionally.

"At what point do you give up the ranged combat for the blade?" one of the new hands asked.

"When the enemy closes to hand combat range, I will draw my blade. Until then, I will strike down as many as I can using ranged methods," Eric replied. "A battle can be won with a sword charge, no doubt, but a battle is won easier and with less friendly casualties when the enemy ranks are depleted before they can attack you."

"Best of both worlds?" the Celt asked.

"Best of all words," Eric corrected. "There isn't a rule stating you cannot use spells and archery at the same time, provided you know what you are doing. Same thing in close; if you need to tear three or four enemies up in close, I can name one good spell for it right now." Another arrow, another hit but one almost off the target. "Always flexibility," he declared. "Deplete them at range, then finish them in close."

"_**Reset Archery Targets**_," the Rune Maiden chanted from behind the archery line. "You will need to continue practice, but this time do as Eric described: attack with both spellcraft and archery, not just with your bows." She was silent for a few moments, though everyone could tell she had more to say. "You will need both these skills out on your missions. Especially you, Atrebas."

"Whenever I hear that, I cannot help but wonder what the Gods have in store for you."

"You want no part of this one," Eric replied to the recruit. "Where I go, death and destruction will be on the greatest of scales. The Spartan might enjoy it, but even the Gods cannot help me in what must be done when I leave." It was assumption on his part, but a calculated one at that: if the Fates could not see what he was to do, the likelihood that any friendly God could help him was practically zero. _Maybe the All-Father_, Eric corrected himself, but all things considered Lord Odin was busy dealing with problems just the same, meaning that Eric probably would be operating alone.

It was less than a comforting feeling to Eric, since he almost always operated in consort with someone, but it was a requirement in the end. He would learn to operate alone, if needed.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 7 years 6 months after departure from Durgan)

Despite the years grinding onward, daily training and tales of the end of all Existence steeled the ex-Durgan against the thought of flight. There was no running away from this one. There was no hiding from these responsibilities. Someone had to do it, and the Fates picked him for a reason. Specifically what that reason happened to be, well, that left plenty of room for speculation.

More than just training, Eric had been released by the Fates to learn it all. Combat, noncombat, mental pursuits, strategy, economics, the works. This release also included some things the Fates knew of that most the Gods did not know of, forms of spellcraft that most Gods would never use nor understand. Forms of attack and defense, healing and effect beyond Eric's wildest nightmares became opened up to him as he continued the study of wizardry under the Rune Maidens.

The days had slowly changed from a series of thirds (physical / magical / intellectual training) to a ratio of quarter – quarter – half, given that Eric learned new spells in a margin of time nearing impossible. Understanding new concepts? Easy; once Eric understood the validity of the new lesson he could think of many ways to reapply it to old scenarios, some good, some bad. Archery? Eric had even mastered the early crossbows, which though excellent of armor penetration had only limited ranges. Sword and shield? There came a point that even the Rune Maidens were just barely a match for the Durgan; Gods help anyone if he learned and incorporated more forms of swordcraft, they all surmised.

Any person could be taught to fight. Eric did more, he wanted to learn everything he could learn, and because he wanted to learn his training advanced at a pace faster than even the Rune Maidens expected. What they had assumed would take fifteen years or two decades would take slightly less than ten years, twelve at most, they all surmised.

The valley the training encampment roared once again to the sound of explosions; Eric was once again at work, this time practicing a new fire/kinetic combination spell. "_**Objects of the Heavens shall fall upon the lands; the stars shall collapse upon soil to sunder the earth in a Meteor Shower**_!"

The small rock Eric was holding disappeared in a red-white glow, the stone consumed as the material component of the spell. In front of where he stood, a stone outcropping two miles away became the center point of impact for hundreds of small to medium blasts as streaks of rock slammed down into the ground. The hail from the heavens continued for slightly more than a minute, then petered out to nothing. A cloud of dust filled the air in the valley, the product of hundreds of impacts across hundreds of square yards of footprint.

"You know, Mielkiki will not be pleased you just sundered a forest," the Rune Maiden observing the attack noted.

"She will be less enraged once I have a good idea where to rebuild the forest," Eric replied. "For I intend to rebuild it at double density."

"Please do," the Rune Maiden said. _Nothing in what we've taught you can do that_, she thought but did not say.

The dust cloud was not overlong in dissipating, aided along its way by a _**Gale Gust**_ spell. "_**Teleport**_," Eric completed the basic teleport spell that took him down to the bare edge of the destruction. "Damn, too hot in here," he groused. "Can't rebuild the forest yet."

"Then clear out the destruction," the Rune Maiden ordered. It was fairly obvious that Eric had no such skill as of yet.

"I gander this is the new lesson of the day?" Eric asked.

"Aye," she replied. "This rock will suffice;" outside the circle of destruction, a small stone jutted from the ground. "_**Force Sphere**_," she chanted, which generated a blue-green sphere that hovered above her right palm. With a simple shove, the sphere traveled a stone throw's arc to the rock. "_**Detonate**_," she completed the chant, which caused the sphere to expand in a perfect sphere shape and consume the rock. The blue-green glow annihilated stone, dirt, plant and air all the same; after the shell disappeared in a minor flash, the unmistakable sound of thunder filled the area so consumed.

"What...what manner of spell was that?" Eric asked.

"It is something called Force," the Rune Maiden replied. "Unlike most forms of spellcraft, it can't be used by everyone. I am the only Rune Maiden who can come close, and my 'close' is nowhere near proper. Verthandi believes you can use it, so I was told to unseal the records and begin your training on this craft."

Eric was silent at the mention of her name. Even today he did not completely understand his purpose for the Gods, or if he was nothing more than a simple cog in the machine that counted down the days until the end of Existence, yet a willing cog at that. He had not forgotten his pledge to his comrades in Durgan, but some things mattered a bit more than Eric's desire to return home. Delaying the inevitable end of Existence was one of those things.

Eric bowed to the necessity of the lesson; the skill demonstrated was immensely powerful, capable of annihilating matter in such a fashion that no trace was left. For most purposes it would be overkill, but there would be cases where such wanton and absolute destruction was needed.

"I stand ready, milady," Eric replied after a moment's hesitation.

"You will need this," she said before she handed Eric yet another tome. Unlike the other ones, this one had a cobalt dyeing to the cover, which indicated to Eric that such was a significant color in the lesson.

Taking possession of the book, Eric read quickly through the preamble. Though he was now versed in the Runes of the Norse and their spoken language, the reading was more automatic to him than taking a dump. As a preparatory lesson for one of the last, great outstanding subjects he still had to cover, Eric had broken the magic seal on one of his swords, amplified the healing properties of the blade twofold, and added a translation spell to it that allowed him to read or speak any language needed so long as he wore the sword or had a hand on the pommel. Those simple modifications had consumed three days to add to the relic; Eric rightly assumed that further modifications to the Relics would take far more time, or the preparations of a new relic would require more time still.

On the meat of the subject, Eric found himself stunned. When he watched the first demonstration of the first spell, he knew he now held the answer to the old question of what the blue light truly was, the recurring horrible blue light in his dreams. It was the same spellcraft he was now preparing to learn. A form of mass-destructive spellcraft that not even the Gods used. Force wizardry.

"Do you know how you are going to tackle the problem you have generated?" the Rune Maiden asked.

"For today, it cannot be done like this," Eric surmised before he closed the book. Included were spells for more than just annihilation, he could use healing and some small effect spells using this fain of wizardry. "I am not powerful or skilled enough to properly erase the meteor fragments here using this new magic. I can, however, quench the area with rains and prepare to regrow the forest using the Druid's techniques..."

"Then begin," she replied. _You pass that test_, she did not say.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 8 years 3 months after departure from Durgan)

Across the field from where Eric stood, in the forest rebuilt from his meteor strike practice, Shiori stood with her blade readied.

Eric had deliberately inverted his day in the weeks past, that he could practice battle at night while he trained in logic and spellcraft during the twilight hours. One of the Rune Maidens saw to his training during those hours of light, but otherwise during the night he was alone and training specifically to operate alone. Slowly, he was pushing himself to the upperbound of mortal capabilities.

Tonight was the moment of truth. The one sword he always thought himself incapable of catching, he had caught multiple times in practice in the past weeks. They were not full combat blows, but that they were easily intercepted was telltale enough: with a single spell to hasten his perception of reality, he could capture the sword. With the spell laid in, all that remained was the trial.

"You are sure?" Shiroi asked. "If you miss, Fates will need to find replacement for you."

"I will not miss," Eric replied. "Please begin."

She closed up on Eric, not making the matter particularly difficult on him but still ample to cause some worry. When she closed to proper sword-swing distance, she simply stood there. "I—I can't do this," she replied. "I cannot strike down a friend."

"Then shall I?" Eric replied.

"What?" She noticed that Eric's hand had gone to his sword-hilt, and it was one of the magicked broadswords. "You—"

"Stand your ground!" Eric ordered. "There is no surrender, no retreat from these duties!"

The draw of an inch of his blade was enough to engender a reaction from Shiori. Before he could even clear the sword from his sheath, hers had come up and swung down, a perfect arc that would have split him in half from head to groin. She shrieked in the moments thereafter, when she realized he had baited her to bypass her hesitation, though likely at the cost of his life. "Damn merciless soldier, no friends, all enemies," she groused, her eyes still closed from the strike.

"With friends like you, enemies are only a fringe benefit," Eric replied. Shiori opened her eyes at such words, and in the glow given off by her sword realized that Eric had caught her blade perfectly, if not that distant from his head. "Now, I am rather hesitant to release this blade since you're still driving down on it, so would you let up a bit?"

"Oh, sorry," she replied before she completely released the handle of her sword.

"Better," Eric replied as he slowly lowered the blade of the sword from striking intercept position to the ground, where he could change grips. "I would not relish having to face you for real."

"Jerk," the strike of the sheath against the top of his head was enough to knock the ex-Durgan to his knees. "Could have killed you doing that."

"You would not begin the stroke, I had to force you to do it somehow," Eric replied evenly before he laid out on the ground. "And you must be willing to turn your blade on an ally that has soured, defected to the enemies."

"Understood," she replied. One of the many lessons of the training was in the influence of the Trickster, who could corrupt mortal man to his will seemingly at random. In such cases, the agents of destruction had to be struck down, regardless of who it was. "Still..."

"Still, a damn good swing," Eric noted.

"A damn good catch," she replied, followed by a sigh. "Cannot remain infuriated with you for long. What now?"

"More practice," Eric replied as he levered himself to standing. "Won't give up until I can assuredly do that first time, every time."

"A different practice," she replied before she turned to walk to a tree now only mostly visible in the starlight. She reached around behind it and came forward with a bundle. "Catch," and she threw the bundle to Eric.

"What is this?" Eric asked before he removed the top of the wrap. "No—no way! I cannot accept this, these swords are too valuable!"

"It is a sword made with magic only, a copy of the physical form of this sword," and she drew part of her enchanted sword to reference what she meant. "They are uncommon, but you must have one to train on."

"You would teach me the art of the katana?" Eric asked, incredulous.

"If you will teach me the Hands of the Gods," she replied evenly.

"It will take years to perfect," Eric replied. "Are you willing?"

"Here," and she passed Eric a wooden training sword similar to a katana. "If you hit me, you may make the choice. If I trap it, erm, I get to make a choice. Just swing as I do," she demonstrated a few overhand swings with her proper sword.

"You say so," Eric replied diffidently before he positioned himself for the strike.

The wooden sword went back and around, then came down distinctly aimed for her shoulder. Eric had no objection to training her in this art either way, he preferred not to teach trapping a blade but she had more than enough speed and reaction skill to make the trap. In this case, she proved herself capable of just what Eric suspected, she trapped the blade between both hands but she did so by way to clenching the whole blade. "Ow," she grunted; the swing was a dead swing but would have stung the palm of her hand from translated impact.

"You have the right idea, but the wrong form," Eric noted. "I would call that a win for both of us, in this case."

"What is your decision?" she asked, dejected of the thought.

"I will teach you how to properly trap a blade, if you will teach me how to use this," and Eric indicated the new sword.

"Thank you, Eric-san," she replied. Eric blanched; she practically never said his name.

"And what was your decision?" Eric asked, since he could sense her choice was specifically not related to the training question just posed.

Shiori looked around the area. "This is not suitable area to make hide," she replied. "Will need one for my decision, and rest of night." she noted.

Eric said nothing, just simply began planning on how to implement her plan.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 9 years 0 months after departure from Durgan)

A piece of metal, square, several inches a side and half an inch thick, was set down in front of Eric. This was followed by a very large book, significantly larger and thicker than anything else Eric would ever have considered need for.

"You, Eric Atrebas, have done far more than we ever expected," the Rune Maiden noted. "And done it far faster than we expected. The lesson you will begin today and continue until for many months to come is the penultimate _material_ expression of a wizard's power. You already wear four such devices routinely."

Put that way, Eric had a fair idea what she was referring to: relics. Two swords, which he had not yet named, and two relic magic tomes contributed significantly to his magic skills as well as tracked his spells. Enchanted items, magicked items, cursed items, there were many names for the art of turning a common item (a sword) into a relic (a sword that could cut through sheer stone, translate languages, and manipulate the growth of plants within arm's reach).

"When was I supposed to begin this art?" Eric asked, wondering how fast he really was going.

"Most wizards never learn this art, or only the barest edges of it, such as creating disposable paper rune charms. Were you on the standard path, we would not be training you in this art for at least another six years, maybe more," she replied. "You...are exceptional," she replied. "You want to learn even the most inane of skills, and it helps that you learn fast. Now, you learn how to improve items and make new objects by spellcraft."

"Where do I begin?" Eric asked.

"You begin by understanding what must be done to make an item into a relic." She began the lesson. "You must first understand the basics of the relics. Do you know the process, from your preparatory lessons a few years back?"

"The item must exist, then a preparation enchantment is applied to the item, then additional modifications, statistics, or abilities are added to the item, then a sealing spell is applied to ensure that the modifications are not removed from the item or unduly changed. If a modification is needed after the item is sealed, the enchantments must be unsealed, dispelled or altered as needed, then resealed."

"Correct," she replied. "You have sealed and unsealed items, which are about the same as preparation of the item, roughly ten hours of enchantment. I believe you added extended healing capabilities and a translation skill to one of your swords, a feat of no mean appreciation for a greenhorn in this art," the Rune Maiden scratched at the surface of the table idly. "Your first effort on this path is going to be a device that will help you immensely in the years to come, and any whom you choose to bestow its knowledge onto."

A stack of bookmarks were set on the table next to the book. "First, you will open to the priming spell necessary to get the project working," she ordered. Eric did as told, using the translation skill of his sword to make sure he was looking at the right thing. "Mark it." Eric inserted the appropriate bookmark in place. "Next, you will enchant the item in question to be polymorphic, that you can change its form and conceal it wherever you go." Eric traced through the index of enchantments, and flipped to the page in question fairly easily. "Third, you will need extra-dimensional storage capability, what is sometimes called 'pocket dimensions' or occasionally 'hammerspace', though I do not know the origin of the last and suspect it a joke." Eric quickly found it in the index and marked that page.

"I will be storing something in a concealable form, I daresay," Eric surmised.

"Oh yes, and the 'what' will be evident with the next four," the Rune Maiden replied. "First, you will need Library Lore, which is a very rare enchantment, useful for only the purpose this relic will be set to." She paused while Eric tracked down the page in question and marked it. "Object Copy, which will allow you to copy objects both pertaining to this task and not," she said. Eric duly marked that page after a minute's hunting. "Magical Object Copy, which is necessary for copying other enchanted objects while maintaining those enchantments." That page was easily found and marked. "Lastly, Object Duplication," she completed the list. "This will allow you to take the copies of the objects stored in the relic and create duplicates, which you can then extract from the relic and use physically."

"I can only guess that this Relic will be a device used to copy books in a form that can then be duplicated at will, wherever I may go?" Eric asked.

"This is correct," the Rune Maiden replied. "There are other ways you can assemble such a device, but this is the most efficient iteration. Library Lore gives you the ability to read an illusion version of the books copied instead of simply copying them out when needed. Library Lore also responds to simple verbal commands and can be used to sort your collection how you wish, though you must have the right activation code which you will ingrain in the Relic during the initial enchantment."

"This is...weird," Eric replied. "Are the straits so dire that I must now take whole libraries with me?"

"The library for this training camp is over 300,000 books," the Rune Maiden replied. "Each book has lessons we all feel you will need, but which time will not allow us to teach you. When you strike out on the mission delegated to you by the Fates, you will have need of that lore. The others may say 'sink or swim' on that note, but this is not a time to be spiteful about these lessons: when you need them, you will truly need them, and not having them may be your demise."

Eric flipped open the index again, traced down the page, then flipped to the appropriate section and marked it. He did the same for another entry. "Best I add enchantments to protect my device from common abuse, and allow it to translate the works without the need for an external relic."

When he looked up, the Rune Maiden was smiling serenely. "Others may have said you have come too far too fast, yet what you just said is ample proof of your foresight. When you have completed this relic, and it will take more than two weeks at normal time, we will introduce you to the library."

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 10 years 6 months after departure from Durgan)

Directly west of the training encampment, a small city-state stood untouched by the recruiting efforts of the Rune Maidens. Eric and Shiori volunteered to be the first to try their hands in town, to better attempt to cull those incapable of using their minds for the tasks needed.

"Foreboding," Shiori noted of the gate house to the city walls.

"Another static structure," Eric replied. "If you can see it, you can hit it."

"If you can hit it, you can kill it," Shiori completed the old saw. Where the Rune Maidens learned that truth, Eric did not know and could not guess.

"We are already being trailed," Eric noted after having walked a mere hundred paces into the town.

"Lodging?" Shiori asked.

"No, we will begin our day's ministrations," Eric replied. He was referring not to any pretense of recruiting, thus far, but to a foppish dandy and his subordinates.

"Well well, what do we have here?" the 'lead' says.

"Sword isn't fooling me, boss," one of the subordinates declared. "Looks like a feisty one to add to your stable."

"The first time had to deal with ranks similar to, was mildly amusing. Four such encounters later, grows old," Shiori commented to Eric.

"Have me beat, only crossed blades with two such ranks," Eric shrugged.

"Take them both, I need another slave to clean my stables," the dandy ordered.

"Iaijutsu?" Eric asked.

"Battojutsu," she replied.

Both crouched down, their swords leveled to the ground and hands just over the grip of their swords. This gave the enemies pause for a few moments, until the five approaching realized that they were not going to draw and simply chuckled before they continued to approach. Two swords and three knives were drawn, though only one such sword being worth its weight as far as Eric was concerned.

"Now!" Shiori ordered, at the perfect time to begin the stroke. As one, the two recruiters both gripped and drew, beginning with the first slash of the sword straight from the sheath. Eric went for the leftmost of the sword-bearers, his slash deliberately low to catch him in the legs. The slash worked; the foe could not react fast enough to counter the attack, and the unmagicked blade simply removed his right leg and gashed the inside of his left leg. His follow-on swings, the point of Battojutsu as opposed to Iaijutsu, went for the second of the enemy in line and came down on his neck faster than the knife could come up to block. His head was not severed per se, but cut enough that what skin remained allowed it to flop grotesquely.

"GOOD GODS! RUN AWAY!" The dandy shouted, putting actions to words as Shiori brought down the second of her threats; hers being the magicked of the twin blades, the lady samurai removed two arms, two legs, and a head from two separate bodies, leaving only one of the enemy still alive.

"Best you start running, you may be able to catch up to your master," Eric told the one remaining ruffian.

"If I turn, y—you'll cut me—"

"Four of you dead is ample. Just shut up and go," Eric ordered.

As the remaining brigand scurried off, Eric pulled a rag from one of his vanquished to clean his sword. Shiori was doing the same as the city watch arrived. "What is this?"

"I would ask the same," Eric replied. "We have been in town less than a measure of time and already we have been assaulted."

"Them...her?" the guard commander asked. It was fairly obvious he knew the brigands cut down were part of a pimp's enforcement team.

"Indeed, and her blade saw to two of them," Eric confirmed. "This does not bode well for our business intentions," Eric noted darkly.

His warning had the desired effect: "They will give you no further trouble," the guard commander assured them.

-x-

A little noise was all it took to spread the word, and the town's 'rumor mill' did the dirty work for Eric and Shiori. Day one was absent both threats and recruits, day two was still absent threats though had a few who tried. Day three (of five planned) was where the real numbers picked up.

"You are the ones recruiting for the hazardous mission?" a guy slightly younger than Eric asked.

"Am," Eric replied. "You want in?"

"Only if you tell what the mission is, first," he replied.

"Can't go too far into specifics, but you will be learning how to do battle in many fashions and using those skills to eliminate certain persons," Eric replied. It was enough detail to answer the question and enough shadow to hook the applicants with some mystery.

The guy mulled the thought over for a moment. "Have you room for a semi-pro adventurer and mercenary?"

"If you can pass the tests, sure," Eric replied. "The jobs requires thinking more than it requires skill in combat, trust me on that if nothing else today. If you can prove the sharpness of mind, I think we can find ample use for the sharpness of arms."

"I stand ready," the vagabond said.

Eric reclined in his chair a bit. "Then we start by testing your ability to think through a complex matter. Listen well, for I disdain repeating myself. As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sons, every son had seven sacks, every sack had seven cats, every cat had seven kittens. Kittens, cats, sacks, sons, wives, how many were going to Saint Ives?"

"May I?" He gestured to the grease-and-charcoal pencil sitting on the table between himself and the two recruiters.

"By all means," Eric replied.

The vagabond bent to his ministrations and began making random marks while muttering through the riddle several times. After he had completed the fourth order of calculations in the wrong direction, he suddenly stopped and started chuckling. "That's good, comrade," the vagabond groused. "Somewhere in Existence, there is a Sphinx that would hump your leg for a riddle of that caliber."

"I daresay you have seen through it?" Eric asked in response.

"Oh yes, in the riddle only I am going to Saint Ives, the rest are simply a farmer, seven rather horny wives and a crapload of sons that have nothing better to do than put cats in sacks. Just one guy goes to Saint Ives."

"This one may fly," Shiori noted. "I will continue."

"The lady as well?" the vagabond asked.

"You have an objection to such?" Eric asked warily. If they couldn't tolerate working with ladies, they were automatically disqualified.

"No, certainly not," he replied. "Some of the best company I ever kept was a pair of lady archers and a middle-age witch. Nothing beats killing 'em at range so I don't have to use this on 'em," and he touched his sword's pommel.

"Well, your next test is a measure of your ability to determine where your foe is," Eric replied. "A failure here will not necessarily disqualify you, but the result may change your pace and focus in training. Put this on," and Eric provided a blindfold.

"And this is about?" the vagabond asked. "How am I supposed to tell where a person is without my eyes?"

"Your eyes can be deceived, very easily as it happens. If you have served with a witch, you should already know this. You must be able to track and vanquish a target without the use of your eyes," Eric replied.

"Understood," he replied solemnly before he took up the blindfold. With it on, Shiori immediately and silently moved around and behind him.

"Now, tell me where the lady stands," Eric said.

The Vagabond considered it for a moment. "Behind me two yards, slightly to my right."

"Maintain the blinder," Eric ordered, then nodded to Shiori to move. "Again, please."

Again, the vagabond considered it for a moment. "To my left and slightly forward of me, almost to the ironsmith's counter."

"Very well, please remove the blindfold," Eric ordered. "Your skills in this sense are sharp, but require honing to improve your reaction speed. The training will cover that adroitly."

"Interesting," the vagabond replied. "What test stands next, comrade?"

Eric smiled serenely. "Speak to me of some lessons you have learned over the course of your adventuring," Eric said.

"Oh, tough one," the vagabond replied. "I'd say the big one I have learned is simple: if there is a sign that says 'do not enter' there is usually a good reason to not enter that area."

"And if you must, then what?" Eric asked.

"I commonly carry an ash pole, 12 feet of length, that I can use for a spear or to set off traps at a distance. More than once I have dodged a poisoned crossbow bolt on such foresight."

"An interesting lesson," Eric made sure he kept that thought in mind for his own purposes. "Any other sage wisdom?"

"Yeah, sometimes, when you find a sword in a weird place, it has strange properties to it. Like this one, just a normal sword when used against normal foes, but when used against a bear it chops through them as if chopping air."

"Interesting," Eric examined the sword. "It's a relic blade, but the only property it has is an ursine slayer addition," Eric noted. "Not properly sealed, though. Well, one of the things the training covers is modification and creation of relics, so you may get a chance to upgrade this blade...if you can pass the stringent requirements for wizards."

"Wait, this includes wizardry training...for guys?" Eric simply nodded. "You?" Eric nodded again. "I did not think that was possible."

"Nor did I, until I came into the graces of the group for which I am now recruiting," the ex-Durgan replied.

"Well, that's something," the vagabond replied. "Now you really have my curiosity, if wizard training is mandatory. What further test stands before me?"

"I require two answers for two questions," Eric said calmly. "First, the training for this duty will take no less than a decade, likely more. You will be recompensated in both restoration of body and lengthening of lifespan due to the training, but be aware of the initial outlay. Can you stomach this?"

"Ten years now for a few extra decades later? I have no complaint about that, and a decade training in these arts would be welcomed."

"Second, when you take this training it is extremely likely you will be called to combat by the Gods of the North. Will you serve them as is needed?"

"Do you?" the Vagabond asked in reply.

"Oh yes, both directly and indirectly," Eric replied immediately. "My homeland cast me out for being too good, a threat to the established political order. The North-men were kind enough to take me in, drill me in new arts of war. I would readily repay them in any capacity."

"I can think of worse Gods to serve under than the North-men's pantheon. If they call, I will answer."

Eric looked to Shiori, who nodded. "Three days hence, return here at the fifth bell of the day. We will begin the trek to the training site at that time."

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 12 years 0 months after departure from Durgan)

The rain of the morning was itself enervating to Eric; the one time he did not live for was days of rain. His scry of the weather to come showed he would spend the first three days of march under continual rain, but he had done worse in Durgan. This would be simple.

What took others a factor of two decades to properly learn, Eric had come to understand in a mere 12 years. With no further practical lesson to teach the Durgan soldier, the Valkyrie had signed off on his training one by one. Effectively, his training was done, though such had not been said directly.

With nothing else to work on actively, Eric had spent a fortnight paging through old tomes in the library, learning some interesting tricks of spellcraft that would modify his basic spells in ways that Eric could not even manage to imagine. He learned of yet more forms of spellcraft, though could not even begin to practice them because of the lack of active training in such arts. Eric could handle any of the major forms of wizardry (Spell, charm, rune, ethereal, and relic), some Druidic skills (particularly those relating to trees), and some minor psionic skills (the ability to sense beings about to attack), but that was it. Arts like Geomancy, spirit calling, summoning, and untold others were outside his ken and threatened to stay that way.

The Norns had come in force to the camp on the eve of his final day; Verthandi and Skuld, the Fates of Today and Tomorrow respectively, and Eric understood that today was the jump-off day. Eric knew they knew far more than they were letting on to, but did not press on the matter. The Gods did what the Gods did, and Eric's training only revised his understanding that the Gods did what they did for whatever reason they saw as appropriate. When the two entered the library where Eric now camped, he stood and bowed.

"Your understanding is not incorrect, Atrebas," Skuld replied to his unstated aspersions. "Today is where the stone is cast. Herein, you will become the stone we loose to create the waves of tomorrow."

Years of training had hardened Eric to the thought of such otherwise violent, hapless metaphor. Eric knew he had a duty to execute, and now was not the time to bicker on such matters. A lot more than just his own life was on the line in these affairs. "Thy bidding, I stand ready to do," Eric replied.

"You will become the stone, Eric," Verthandi noted. "What is the most efficient way to create an ever-broadening ripple, in your judgment?"

"An empirical reaction," Eric replied immediately, having long considered the quandary posed to him by Verthandi nearly a decade ago. "Similar to what is being done here. A trainer trains a new trainer, who then goes out and trains new trainers and warriors, and the process repeats."

"To the north, you will find a group not dissimilar from you. They will want to learn, just as you. Instruct them, just as you have been instructed here, and you will create the first-order ripple."

Eric nodded solemnly. "What are my restrictions?"

"None," Skuld commented. "None at all, and you will understand why when you are faced with what you must do."

"We must not keep you long, Eric," Verthandi notes. "Time is its own foe in these matters. Gather your equipment and be on the move shortly."

"We must leave now, for we have other matters to see to. We will watch over you, Eric."

With that aspersion, both the Fates had disappeared, leaving Eric alone again in the library. After a brief look around the facility he penned a quick note to the Rune Maidens, thanking them for the training and challenge, then collected only his required equipment and was out the door.

Outside, Eric stopped to observe the camp, now being hammered by evening rain-showers. The men and women inside were his comrades, training partners, and in one case a lover. This land, these buildings, a rank of disparate people had become the home that Durgan was no longer. That thought was his singular shock of the day; where others would mold people into one uniform rank, this facility sought to enhance the individual strengths and diminish the weaknesses of the trainees. For Eric, it had been a strength of arms and learning, wagered against a weakness of purpose. For that, Durgan could not be the proper home to which he sought; Durgan had no purpose other than to earn money in battle, while greater threats loomed elsewhere in Existence.

Before he even left the perimeter of the camp, Eric was accosted by the draw of a blade. "Leaving now? This close to completion?" Shiori asked dangerously.

"My training is done," Eric replied evenly. "The Fates have spoken; I have duties to see to elsewhere."

Shiori nodded. "Catch," she ordered before she loosed an object at Eric.

"This?" Eric asked after he drew an inch of blade of the sword she had tossed to him. "Your original sword?"

"You will bring it back to me, with tales of what it was used for," she replied.

"It shall be done," Eric replied as she closed up on him. One quick kiss followed.

"I will wait," she said. "Do what you must."

"I will return."

Silently, Eric was unsure if he ever would see her again, but he swore to himself he would try.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

There will be days upon which Eric cursed his name and stubbornness for taking this detail. Of course, there is motivation to do it, since as Verthandi pointed out not doing it means he would go blade to blade with a Goddess and not quite make it away alive. In my opinion, that counts as plenty of motivation to go ahead and just do the crappy cosmic-chew-toy job and be done with it. Who knows? It may be interesting after all is said and done.

My Beta had an outstanding question as to one detail in the story, where Eric used pre-chanted spells, and how that could be seriously overpowered if there was no limits on it. Strictly speaking, there is a hard limit on what spells can be pre-chanted, as about half of black-class spells cannot be so prepared. Most combat healing spells can be used in delayed-chant configuration, but with the limit that such spells only work to half-power (half radius of effect). Almost all Combat Gray spells (effect magic) can be so used, but again with limits on how much effect. The list goes on, but I'm not going to spoil the surprise for later chapters.

The advance of time is rapid and brutal in this chapter. Eric walked into the camp of the age of 16, and walked out at the age of 28, no mean feat even for he. Even though he has learned much, he still doesn't know enough and he still doesn't really know what he should be doing. He may be just a cog for now in the grand machine of fate, but even a small cog has a hard time of it from day to day. Last I checked, nobody said it would be easy for him, thus...

You do see a bit of a shift of attitude throughout the chapter, though: when Eric walked in, he was all about doing the job, but as the chapter advanced that shifted bit by bit until he was as much concerned about learning the esoteric arts as he was doing the duty. That attitude may serve him well, and probably will get him in trouble quite a bit. Some things are better left unseen, trust me on that if nothing else.

That's it for the chapter. NEXT UP: "Go North" the Fates told him. They deliberately did NOT tell him what was waiting for him in the north, and for good reason.

* * *

Review Replies: Four reviews is absolutely stunning. You have my thanks for the critique and ideas, one and all :)

**Etienne Of The West Wind**: You have a point, but trouble is only beginning for the poor sod, and enchanted weapons are only one facet of that trouble. A big facet that will haunt him for long time to come, but just one facet.

As to the men thus dragged off, it went unstated in this chapter but they are all in the training or have moved on to their duties. They didn't die, much as was assumed; Shiori deliberately picked persons who could do the job for good reason.

**FraserMage**: Oh yes, and a hard way to die at that, very difficult for a coroner to even understand how it was done unless they knew what had caused it. Also, the inverse can be just as lethal: filling all the cavity space in a person with water can drown someone just as readily as completely evaporating their water content. (You know, I'm not surprised you came up with that.)

**Knives91**: Life insurance is the least of Eric's worries, as of this chapter... Hope this one is up to your standards, amigo.

**Alex Yamato**: I drop no spoilers, amigo, but the background of my other story makes it hard to conceal such events...

If you have OC subs for any part of either of my stories, feel free to drop 'em. I know the real fun of Mobile Warfare is a helluva long way off, but remember that time waits for no man, even someone as crazy as this man.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! The more, the merrier! (Alternately, the more fuel, the longer the burn :) Keep 'em coming, as shall I.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: I'm not sure if Etienne's comment counts as a gripe, but I presently don't think so. Once again, thanks to my beta **Necroblade** for the assist.

* * *

Footnotes: No footnotes this time around.

* * *

Included Works:

IRL

—Eric's comment in section 3, "In war, there is no fair fight," … "Only fights you win or lose." is an old military axiom.

MOVIES

—DIE HARD 3 (Die Hard With a Vengeance): The riddle Eric posed to the vagabond is probably older than dirt, but the first place I heard it is in Die Hard 3. Makes a helluva challenge for anyone who wants in, if you can't figure out a riddle of such a capacity, you probably won't be able to hack it as a wizard.

VIDEO GAMES

—Final Fantasy Series: The spell in section 5, _**Sleep**_, is a modification of the Final Fantasy spell of the same name, though made more powerful and more useful than its video game counterpart. I can't recall ever using a sleep spell in the FF series, it never helped me out in battles. Here, though...

—Final Fantasy IV: The Spell _**Meteor Shower**_ is a modification of the FFIV spell Meteo, the latter of which being the ultimate attack spell in the game. Though the version used here is far from the ultimate attack spell, it retains a huge amount of destructive potential. Especially when you get up to the level of calling ten-pound stones from the sky.

—Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2): The principle of the Rune Maidens is an adaptation of one of the characters in said game, who can choose to become either a Valkyrie or Rune Maiden as a job class. In this usage, the Rune Maiden is the inverse of the Valkyrie: the Rune Maiden concerns with the living and attempting to slow the advance of Ragnarok; the Valkyrie concern with the dead and the actual fighting of the battle of Ragnarok.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, FIRST EDITION

—Fireball is a third-level Magic-user spell, in effect the same as the D&D counterpart except in how damage and area of effect is determined.

* * *

Spell Catalog:

Herein will be listed a compendium of spellcraft used in the chapter, including pertinent information on minimum requirements to use those spells and what effect a caster can expect when used.

NOTE: MinDR refers to **Min**imum **D**istortion **R**ating, a minimum on a scale of the power of a magic-user. This will be further explained at a later time. Note that the Distortion Rating system is NOT a system of RPG experience, per se, and should not be treated as such.

COMBAT WIZARDRY scope

Combat Attack Branch (Black Wizardry, Assault Wizardry)

—Fireball: MinDR of 20.000, no material components required. Targeted location must be in atmosphere or solid object to take effect. This spell creates a spherical explosive blast of significant proportion depending on the user's distortion power. For each point of DR, the spell produces a blast pressure equivalent to 1 pound of TNT explosive, though the blast area affected is significantly different from the technological equivalent at 1 yard radius per DR. A Fireball has a maximum range from caster to target point of 25 yards per DR. If targeted on a solid object, this spell will turn the object into fragmentation as if the blast point was inside the object. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy in a massive Fireball**_.

—Meteor Shower: MinDR of 50.000, requires one stone of minimum 2 ounces, which is consumed in the casting. Target location must be on a planetoid with a minimum diameter of 500 miles. This spell creates a high-velocity random-pattern meteor shower whose main damage component is kinetic, but which also has after-effects of fire element due to the superheated nature of the meteors thus created. The radius of the affected area is 10 yards per DR of the caster, with the mass of the rocks called being 1 ounce per DR. Due to the huge footprint of the spell, it is often used only on a distant target, of which the maximum targeted range is 100 yards per DR of the caster. The duration of the spell is 10 seconds plus 1 second per DR of the caster, and will generate one random strike per 10 DR per second, fractions rounded down. This spell, once begun, can only be dispelled by a wizard of the next order (e.g., a spell cast by a normal combat wizard can only be dispelled by a Transcendent, and a meteor shower begun by a Transcendent can only be dispelled by a double-transcendent, or so on.). Additionally, this spell cannot be pre-cast and must always be full-length chanted. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Objects of the Heavens shall fall upon the lands; the stars shall collapse upon soil to sunder the earth in a Meteor Shower**_

Combat Effect Branch (Gray Wizardry, Support Wizardry):

—Sleep: MinDR of 5.000, no material components required. This spell is ineffective on any beings that have slept more than 12 hours in the past 24. When applied, the Sleep spell causes a mass of individuals targeted to instantly collapse in sleep, and be unable to be awoken short of significant pain. The amount of persons affected is equal to 3 times a caster's DR, rounded down in the case of fractions. The duration the person remains asleep in such a case is equal to 1 hour per DR, which in the case of higher-power wizards can result in days of continual sleeping. Unlike certain similar spells, the effect of a standard Sleep spell will not be mistaken for catatonic states or death; any person who happens across a person enchanted asleep would clearly recognize this person is asleep and is unlikely to mistake it for anything other than sleep. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The whims of nightfall shall force these beings to Sleep**_.

—Smoke Wall: MinDR of 3.000, no material components required, targeted area of effect must at least be on a planetoid of 150 miles diameter. When used, this spell creates a circular column of smoke on the targeted point rising up from the ground to a height of 1 yard per 1.000 DR of the caster, with a column diameter equal to 4 yards times the caster's DR. This spell will work inside buildings so long as the building is tied to the ground of a minimum-size planetoid. Smoke produced under this spell will cause breathing problems but is not toxic; a cloud generated will dissipate gradually in 15 minutes unless acted on by outside winds. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The grounds of the planet shall give rise to Smoke Wall**_.

CIVILIAN WIZARDRY scope

Common Spellcraft Branch

—Gale Gust: MinDR of 4.500, no material components required, must be in atmosphere to use. This spell creates a wind gust within 1 mile of the caster, traveling in the direction the user is facing at the time of the final completion of the spell. The Gust's power and duration is dependent on the distortive rating of the caster: per each 1.000 of DR, the gust gains 5 MPH speed and 2 seconds duration. It is possible to create hurricane-force winds with this spell by a veteran spellcaster, albeit temporary in nature. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The winds of the planet shall release energy in the form of Gale Gust**_.

Chronological Spellcraft Branch (Manipulation of time and space)

—Teleport: MinDR of 7.500, no material components required, no travel restrictions whatsoever. This spell instantly teleports the caster and any objects on his/her person (subject to weight limit listed below) any amount of distance up to the maximum permissible distance for the caster's skill. The target destination need not be in direct line of sight, but the caster has to have a visual of the area to be teleported to, either by way of having been there prior or by way of some form of scrying (psionic or spellcraft). Note that this is a form of displacement teleportation; if the intended target area is occupied, the occupying material in question will be deposited at the caster's starting location. This can (and has) resulted in stone statues of casters that have teleported themselves inside a mountain. Maximum range of the teleport is 1000 feet per 1 DR of caster's power, maximum weight beyond the user that can be teleported along with is 2 pounds per 1 DR, inclusive of clothing and other gear or objects carried. If the caster exceeds his wight limit, the excess material is left behind starting from the material farthest away from his/her brainstem. Note that enchanted artifacts in the possession of the user are considered part of the user physically and are never discarded during a teleport. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Space and Time bend to the will of one that shall Teleport**_.


	5. Relations

(Chapter 05: Relations)

The march through the rain did not thrill Eric. His oldest complaint over the years was the necessity to operate in rain; something about the gray day and the drizzle sapped his motivation to do anything other than find a cave and sulk. Rain had always enervated him and more to the point made the use of magic a increased hazard; lightning could travel across water and rain could detonate a fireball spell prematurely or drown it out, just as two examples among many. Thus, more than prior he had motivation not to move or operate in the rain.

On the other hand, when beings whose dominion is time declare that one does not have time, one does not dawdle on the premise of personal complaints. Thus, Eric marched dutifully northbound and into the teeth of the incoming storm, content that he had to do what he had to do. The rain slacked after midday on the first march, but that was simply temporary relief; less than a quarter-day later it was back to full force deluge and remained that way for two days.

The ex-Durgan mercenary was thankful he knew how to negotiate, and in one case fast-talk, his way into shelter. On the evening of the first day of marching, a haunch of meat from a slain bear turned out to be more than ample trade for a night in a dry hovel. Eric told no tale to this man, other than his usual cover story of being a loner Durgan mercenary on a special operation. Thankfully, he was far enough away from Durgan that his lack of proper accent was not questioned.

A second day of marching through rain led him to a modest farmhouse, and in this case a little gold provided shelter and two meals. This family Eric did regal with tales of his training in the Rune Maiden's graces, though not his purpose from the Fates. The heavy equipment and relics Eric carried were evidence enough without him using any wizardry for demonstration. He needed give no warning to avoid his gear, the residents of the house were sufficiently thrilled and frightened by the presence of a wizard that they never considered theft.

The third day was no change from the prior two, and Eric continued his march face-first into the hellish rain that now lashed him harder than before. At certain points in travel on this day, Eric could have sworn he was losing progress due to the winds driving him backwards through the mud faster than he could pace himself forward; it took repeated uses of the _**Teleport**_ spell to make any progress in such conditions. On the other hand, a fast tongue and assurances of his skill with a bow was ample for him to secure a ride on a merchant convoy headed in the general direction of his travel. That he never had to use those skills was to benefit of the ex-Durgan, for visibility was poor enough to force close-quarters after a mere single shot of the bow.

Day four was mercifully less of a deluge in terms of rain, having slackened off to a reasonable sprinkle over the intervening night. Eric took his leave of the Merchants and struck off through a forest, never to be seen by those merchants again (who swore he was crazy, but did not question nor delay his departure). The ground still squished underfoot and the trees dripped leaden raindrops, but by midday the skies gave way to partial clouds and some semblance of sunshine; a happy turn of events for the wanderer. He traveled still northward, though could not prepare a hide this evening due to ground saturation; a simple campfire and bare ground sufficed for a night, especially given how remote his campsite was from any road or residence.

On day five, the beginning of a drastic change came to him. Unwarranted but certainly welcomed, Eric found the first of many niches a wizard could possibly find.

-x-

"Is anyone home?" Eric asked at the door to the modest farmhouse. No response other than chanting called Eric's attention to a presence in the building; without word, he quietly entered to track down the resident.

Three living persons were in the house, and one deceased. A guy with a sword laid on his chest was being presided over by a lady and two children, who were chanting something that sounded like a spell to Eric. One misstep creaked a joint in Eric's left foot and broke their chant; all three immediately reacted away from him in horror. "You—who are you?" the mother of the two children asked immediately. "I'll—"

"Spare me a hostile action, I am not here to harm," Eric replied calmly. In the moments thereafter, Eric could tell they were still shocked, but more to the point aggrieved they had been caught in the process of what some would call witchcraft. "Your chant, you were attempting to communicate with the deceased?"

"No, it's not—" she stammered when Eric pulled a massive tome that glowed faintly blue from his drop-pack. "You're a wizard?"

"Among other things," Eric replied as he thumbed the book open. It turned out to be his primer on Force spellcraft, hardly the right book for the job. "Bah, wrong book," Eric said as he moved the tome back to his drop-pouch. "If you want, I can assist."

The lady looked aside for a moment, then looked back to Eric with entreat in her eyes. "Would you, sir? Please? I never had a chance to say my good-byes to him properly."

Eric nodded, knowing that feeling all too well. Without a word he pulled the small metal plate that contained his library, and thumbed the rune to activate the 'library organizer' semi-illusion within. All three gasped when the illusion came manifest, thousands of books in miniature floating in a cloud inside a blueish halo. "Library, show only books primarily dedicated to Necromancy," Eric ordered of his relic. The view of thousands of volumes decluttered to show only a bare handful of books, arrayed in a ring in the illusion, the ring surrounding Eric. With a thumb gesture on the plate, the ring rotated around four volumes clockwise, where Eric stopped it. "Library, eject book," and Eric touched the relic to the book's illusion, which caused it to drop into his waiting left hand.

"That...that is amazing," the novice with said. "Where did you learn that?"

"A group of master Magi, known as the Rune Maidens," Eric said simply. In knowing company he was not afraid to speak their names or their purposes. Without further ado, Eric opened the book and paged to the index, then after reading through for a few moments paged to somewhere in the center. "Okay, this I can do," Eric muttered. "It will take me some time to prepare the necessary rune. If you have not had anything to eat recently, now would be a good time."

Though normally done with specially-prepared (and more powerful) magical dusts or inks, a few handfuls of common dirt could be used in a pinch to create a magic rune, all that was needed was a contiguous set of symbols in the needed shape. Eric used the latter, not having any of the proper material on hand since well before his proper Relic enchantment training, though the use of common material instead of enchanted material made for both faster and far cheaper results.

Then came the part for the actual spell, which was far shorter and more to the point than the process of creating the necessary rune. "Milady, I am ready to begin the incantation," Eric informed her. "You may wish to gather close, but do not step inside the rune while I am chanting."

"Thank you, good sir, I tried, but..."

"It is a different form of the same spell," Eric said. "_**The bounds of space and time to be rent, the will of one ensconced in the Rune of Spirit shall return to these mortal lands for Spirit Communication**_," Eric chanted from the page of his spell book.

The circle surrounding the four-point star of the rune glowed blue momentarily, before a blue column climbed skyward to the height of the deceased man and stopped. The column shrunk in and contorted, after a few seconds forming into the visage of the deceased in translucent outline.

The soul echo of the deceased looked to Eric, and bowed deeply. "Thank you, Sorcerer, for the brief moment with my wife."

"Mikhail!" The lady half-shouted.

"Father!" the elder daughter shouted immediately thereafter.

"I know, everything happened too fast before I was struck down. My sword-arm grew rusty, and I paid for it," the soul echo admitted. "I love you, all three of you and the child now growing within you, Mari, but now is the time for you to mourn and continue, dear. Do not fear for me; Odin's servants have been kind to me, and given me new purpose even in death."

"Th—the Valkyrie? Why?" Eric was unsure why she was shocked by such outcome, but held his tongue.

"It's all up here," and the echo tapped the side of his head. "We who are willing to fight, we shall fight today and forevermore as the Einherjar. For you, fight today and tomorrow as a witch, as you want to be. And enjoy every tomorrow you may have."

The lady sobbed. "You knew?"

The echo of the guy nodded. "I knew, and I did not worry. Today, I stand on the fields of Valhalla and see many witches and wizards, and many more forms of warrior I could never imagine. There is no shame in being a witch."

Eric smiled; if such ranks were so commonplace as to earn posting in Valhalla, Eric figured himself on the right path.

"Father, what about us? What will we do without you?" the younger daughter asked.

"Follow in your mother's footsteps, daughters. There are far worse professions than a combat witch." The echo looked to Eric. "Will you train them, Sorcerer?"

"I, no," Eric replied immediately. "I have orders from higher powers to execute a task. There is a training cadre south of here five days hard march, whereupon they can train in many arts more than just combat wizardry."

"Go to them, Mari," the soul echo said. "You must live for yourself and our children; I can think of no better living for one of your aptitude." The communication illusion began fading. "Sorcerer, the Valkyrie have a message to relay from the Fates: upon a group of nine in relation does your fate hinge; hesitate not before that meeting." He faded further still, almost to the point of lacking visibility. "We will meet again, Mari, my dearest."

"I will always love you, Mikhail," she told the fading echo.

The rune itself was consumed in a magic fire at the termination of the spell, and that blaze consumed the body of the deceased and left not even a bone in remain. The bench he was on was also consumed, but other than those casualties the flames neither touched nor damaged anything else in the room or household.

The lady collapsed to her knees. "Thank you, Sorcerer, thank you," she gasped out between sobs. "I would never have had this closure without your skills, and for that I can never repay such a debt."

"You owe me nothing, milady," Eric replied staunchly. "Our common skill, it is not something to be exploited for profit." Eric pulled his library relic and touched it to the spine of the tome on necromancy he was reading from. "Library, absorb book." With a small gray flash the book was gone, returned to the infinite storage space ensconced inside the relic. "Five days south and slightly east of here is a valley. The locals refuse to tread in those areas, for the presence of witchcraft is strong and not even religious crusaders can survive. Enter the valley and seek out the Rune Maidens within; they will train you in arts that match your predisposition."

"I will go," she replied.

-x-x-x-

Eric did not pause at the lady's house that day, instead opting to move out shortly after he finished the cross-dimensional contact to the deceased. When even the spirits of the deceased was relaying messages for him to move out, Eric figured now would be a good time to _move out_.

The evening and the next day were themselves uneventful, if a bit quiet with having nobody to deal with. The march continued north and slightly west, though at times his march was less paced than it was outright running at a decent speed through the shade of trees to avoid men on horseback or contact with large formations of men. Far better to avoid than annihilate, Eric surmised. Nobody gave chase, nobody realized something was untoward, and Eric continued further onward unchecked.

Three days out from his newly-discovered role as spirit medium, Eric came to a village at a crossroad. Most were suspicious and rightly so, but Eric sought only shelter and a meal for the evening. The ex-Durgan spared a single night for rest, not even to practice spells, since he knew he was under scrutiny the whole time he was in the village, a move calculated to avoid being torched. Few were out in the morning, though most were respectful on their goodbyes of the day. The kids chased him as far as the bend in the road, but dutifully turned back when one of the adults called them back to task.

The paths north of Durgan, Rome, and Greece began to roughen, almost to the point of having no path at all to follow. Eric figured it no concern, his direction was set and his purpose clear. This change of terrain worked to his advantage, in the end; without any actual path to follow, he could not be pursued overland by any decent force, and even small units of riders or trackers were easily dispatched at range with spellcraft. Survivors were dispatched by bow and arrow; of the two parties that pursued him with the intent of theft not one soldier closed to blade range. The trail of dead bodies must have been ample to quell further pursuit; another five days passed without undue harassment.

His next encounter with civilization would cement a lesson learned from the Rune Maidens: do it right, or innocence dies.

-x-

"And you are following me why?" Eric asked plaintively of the urchin that was now behind him.

"You're an interesting stranger, and I don't recognize where most of your gear is from," the teen replied. Nothing of the street urchin screamed overt criminal, but by the same token Eric saw in the eyes and demeanor someone who was well versed in shady dealings and fast hands. It helped that Eric had the same skills and practiced them even in the company of the Rune Maidens.

"Suit yourself," Eric commented before he sidled up to a merchant's stall. "Have you some arrowheads?"

"Stone or metal?" the Merchant replied.

"Metal by preference, stone if necessary," Eric replied.

"Metal it is," the Merchant replied. Eric's latest translation relic, a simple metal band around his right wrist, worked flawlessly to translate into his native tongue of Greek, and to translate his speaking ability into the local patois. "What is your intended method of payment?"

"Gold," Eric replied simply.

"A hundred arrowheads for twenty coin," the Merchant replied.

"Twenty coins of this size?" Eric replied, showing the significantly larger coins he was carrying.

The Merchant choked up at the size of the coins demonstrated. "Of those? Certainly not! A hundred for twelve, but no less!"

"Closer to acceptable," Eric replied. "A hundred for eleven," he countered.

The Merchant hesitated, but not for long. "So be it. How many hundreds?"

"Three hundred heads," Eric replied smoothly. He doled out six stacks of five and one stack of three coins to pay for the arrow heads.

"Be you preparing for war?" the Merchant asked grudgingly as he shelled out the arrow heads.

"No, preparing for peace," Eric replied. "For tomorrow may not be so peaceful."

"True," the merchant admitted. "Your 300 heads." A small bag was presented with the purchased item. Eric unslung his backpack temporarily and added the new items to his storage, then remounted the pack. The size and apparent weight of the pack was stunning to both the urchin following him and the Merchant. "How much do you carry in that thing?"

"Over double a Roman's full kit, maybe even thrice such a kit," Eric admitted. "It is good training for strength and endurance," he declared casually.

The merchant simply grimaced and said no more. Eric took his leave of the stall and continued northbound in the town, intent to verify there was nothing else in the market square that could be used in his ongoing travels.

"You are still following me," Eric noted to the street urchin.

"You're still interesting," the teen replied.

"If you are interested in interesting occurrences and people, explain to me what is the concern with that lady and the four guys," and Eric indicated who he was referring to by way of pointing at the group in question.

"Oh that, she's the town Madam," the urchin replied. "She's also afraid of nothing, and she's probably arguing with that crew over fees due for services rendered."

"She is," a lady said from behind and to the left of Eric. He had to shift his shield out of the way to see her. "I slept with them last night and they refused to pay."

"Oh, interesting guy, this is my courted, Elena," the urchin said. Eric would have barely figured her sixteen to the urchin's eighteen, and that a generous appraisal. "I'm trying to get to a position where she doesn't need to prostitute to make ends meet."

"A lofty goal," Eric replied evenly.

The Madam waved for the urchin and the working teen to approach. Eric followed, somewhat intrigued as to the outcome of this matter and significantly concerned for the madam, the harlot, and the urchin when dealing with such a wild-eyed throng. In route, Eric made his usual examination of terrain, buildings and persons in the area, lest he be caught in battle and be forced to use them against the men in question. Eric was surprised to realize the street was cobblestone and he had not noticed; a loose stone he picked up, intent to use an interesting trick he learned in years past should the battle occur, but the cobblestone was the key component. "And you are?" the Madam asked when he arrived.

"A simple wanderer, passing by yet intrigued by the outcome of this tale," Eric replied semi-truthfully.

"Elena, let me be clear on this one, they did not pay you for last night?" the Madam asked.

"No, milady," Elena replied.

"I grow tired of these lies!" the lead man, a short one by even Durgan standards, drew his blade. "I will silence you for this!"

"You will not," Eric replied simply and calmly. The young courtesan instinctively ducked out of the way and bolted behind Eric, specifically putting his shield between herself and the enraged vagabond.

"Out of the way, wanderer! I will have her tongue in compense for this insult!"

Eric simply set his shield to receive his attack, and the enemy obliged. As the Madam moved back and away, the blow of a sword resounded off the bronze shell covering his shield, though Eric gave him not a whit more for a second attack. A shove with the shield bowled the aggressor over and onto the ground, the strike of his head enough to daze him somewhat.

"Like Hades we'll put up with this!" a second enemy drew his sword, a slightly better one but still far from intimidating to Eric.

Eric's simple response was to hold his right hand out to the side, with the small stone between his middle and ring fingers. "_**The rocks of this land shall give unto the sky fifteen Stone Shards**_," Eric canted in the intervening seconds; his words stunned the enemy to motionlessness, at least until small glowing circles started appearing on the cobblestones below his right arm. A step back for them all presaged the appearance of the called stone shards, which began hovering beside Eric in a semi-cloud of rod-shaped almost arrows, each as long as a man's forearm and as thick as a man's thumb.

"He's a Gods-damned Wizard! What the hell do we do?" the most frightened of the three asked his cohorts.

"Don't do anything hasty! Those things will kill us if we provoke him!" the lead of the three standing said.

Eric made sure he was pointing at them before he said "_**Reorient**_," a command which caused the pointy ends of the stone rods to aim at their myriad group. "This is where you call how the battle goes. Pay the ladies their dues and leave this scene, and nothing further will happen. Persist, and I will finish the spell," to which none of the persons nearby had any trouble guessing what would happen should he do so.

The response from the silent of the trio caught Eric off-guard, and itself was their undoing. A thrown knife connected with Eric's waist faster than he could interpose the shield, a strike that caused a significant gash in his side for the effort. "_**Release**_!" Eric shouted as he flinched the shield into a defensive position, mentally assured that their effort was a cooperative play. With one simple word, the stone darts moved forward of their own volition, with nine of the darts finding targets before the rest impacted the ground in the market square, scattering and fracturing harmlessly. Those that hit resulted in six body shots, one in the face, and two arms (not including one that went through an arm to get to a body). All three were dead before they impacted the ground.

Eric pulled the knife from his torso and applied a cloth to the wound. "_**Aurora Healer**_," the Madam chanted, touching Eric's shield to complete an indirect contact for the spell. Eric glowed with an Aurora Borealis effect for a few moments, as the injuries sustained over the past weeks were erased by the civilian curative spell.

"You are a Mage?" Eric asked of the matron.

"Of course, big guy," the Madam responded immediately. "How do you think I provide such good service for both my employees and clients?"

"Well," Eric began a comment, but silenced himself. "And you?" he asked of the fourth guy, now just standing from being shield-checked to the ground.

"Huh?" the dazed brigand asked in response, then looked around himself. His dead comrades provided enough answer, especially with stone rods permeating their bodies. "I—holy shit!" he nudges one of the bodies. "All three, and nary a scratch on you, wanderer. I surrender."

Eric smiled serenely, now pleased he did not have to kill all four. "Your term of surrender is as follows. You will pay the matron the dues owed for services rendered your team, and you will pay the lady who serviced you a due equal to what her rate is for you alone for a night, is this clear?"

"Yes, sir," he replied immediately, then tossed a coin bag to the Madam. "Should be enough in there for what he just said," the guy said.

"Now that that is done, your next is as follows. If the Madam sees fit, you may continue business or personal relations with her and her staff, but in all other endeavors you are to avoid harassment of their group. If I must return to enforce this policy, you will not like the result. Are we clear on this term?"

"Quite clear, sir," the brigand said.

"You are dismissed," Eric ordered. The Brigand was not overlong in finding his way away from Eric and out of sight. "Elena, street urchin, I suggest you strip valuables and gear off these bodies before they become too blood-soaked. You can use the gear for your own or sell it for profit."

"You killed them, don't you want anything?"

"I have more than enough," Eric replied honestly. "Besides, if you are trying to get out of the prostitution and street-racketeering businesses, you will need the capital."

-x-x-x-

The night of Eric's action in town was relatively calm for the Ex-Durgan – he simply trapped both the door to his inn room and the window with a _**Flare Guard**_ rune, set to activate if anyone or anything entered the rune's bounds. This worked to the detriment of a thief (from the window) and a drunkard 'moral crusader' at the door, though the latter's demise started a minor fire that Eric had to extinguish by way of a bucket of water. Nobody else was foolhardy enough to try provoking the wizard after his fourth and fifth kills of the day.

The Madam from the day before and her stable of ladies were the first in line to see Eric out the north gate to town, though there were some others that wished to request spellcraft favors from the wizard. Eric ended up preparing a _**Light Rains**_ rune at a farmhouse just outside town, with the express warning not to activate the rune until nightfall for best effect. The farmer activated it just before sunset, and Eric could see the rain clouds form behind him in the distance at that time, which also meant that he had not been rained on.

A week of hard march took Eric north further into areas no Greek or Roman expedition had ever seen; even the name of his old hometown engendered no response from those few farmers or merchants he spoke to. This did not surprise Eric, nor was it unwelcomed; the likelihood that an Ex-Durgan would encounter those whom Durgan had offended fell farther into obscurity the farther north he traveled. On the other hand, it also made trade a bit more difficult for Eric in the long run, as the name of his hometown would not buy a dispensation from anyone he spoke to, meaning he had to pay honest price for honest goods. These exchanges went a long way to hardening his resolve to do the duties of the Gods before again thinking loud about a return to his hometown.

Three days march through wild lands went unhindered, Eric living off the land and the occasional use of spellcraft where necessities were not met by his hands. One of the lessons demonstrated multiple times during his training was a clear warning against the overuse of spellcraft to solve problems that might have a simpler solution. Eric heeded the lesson adroitly; where he could use his bow to strike down a turkey or a deer, he did so in preference to using spellcraft to turn material into foodstuffs. Water was the exception; with little in the way of verifiable clear and safe water, he did routinely use spellcraft to create water safe to drink.

The one unusual thing that came to Eric's attention as he traveled further north was the prevalence of wolves. Though not unheard of in the south, the sheer density of such beast in these lands north of any sane Greco-Roman's domain was ample reminder to Eric that new lands meant new threats. On the other hand, even the amount palled to nothing in the end; no wolf would close with Eric, much less consider attacking him. The Ex-Durgan was unsure if this was a case of the Gods playing a hand in such affairs or if they could sense he was a wizard and would not take chances. Eric leaned toward the former; Odin had as servants two wolves of exceptional size and intelligence, thus he considered it not beyond the realm of possibility that Odin was keeping the wolves at bay.

The evening of the eleventh day beheld something that Eric had not experienced in many years: a dream so clear as to constitute a vision, though how or why such visions occurred was beyond even the ken of the Fates. Within such vision, Eric witnessed himself speaking to a myriad group of nine, split seven ladies (all but one younger than he) and two men (both younger than he). He could not remember what he was speaking to them about, but he could remember than all nine were paying sharp attention to him with every intent of absorbing the lesson fully. Among them, each had at least a belt knife, four had pikes of notable stature, and two wore the sword Gladius just as he did. The setting in which they spoke was neither Durgan nor the lands surrounding it, a bit confusing given that he was a long ways away from Rome and definitely not in Durgan in the vision.

Upon waking, Eric clearly remembered the vision as he forgot more formless dreams or nightmares. With such lesson clear in his mind's eye, he climbed through the canopy of his hide, dragged his gearpacks out from the semi-shelter, and mussed his campsite to prevent easy identification. He turned to face north and began the march, content that sooner rather than later he would understand the purpose behind such a vision.

It would be two days before he found such an answer.

-x-x-x-

The city within which Eric stood was definitely on the low end of the 'order versus anarchy' measure. That four or five unsavory crowds had already eyed him with a measure of inspection told enough tale; the watch showing all indication of boredom and latitude in normal conduct cemented the thought that he would probably have to cleave his way out of town. Absently, Eric's shield hand went down to the sheath of his enchanted katana, a move to ensure it was at the proper angle for Iaijutsu. If he was fated to do battle in these streets, he wanted to ensure he had company at the gates to Hades when he got there.

Partway into the southern half of town, no soul had harassed him; the nondescript (unadorned) hoplite-style shield was probably the deciding factor, given that the few shields Eric had seen were all small devices, mostly bucklers and the occasional shield with a bare square-foot of surface. When wagered against the massive shield Eric carried, just about everyone in town was woefully underprotected; add in the _**Shield**_ rune Eric had permanently inscribed into the back of the shield, and the matter only became more one-sided in terms of defense. The choice armaments of the town were also skewed in his favor. The most threatening arsenal he had thus far seen were those of the watch, bows and pikes as primary weapons. The common mass carried only knives or the occasional short sword, hardly a threat to a professional solder such as he.

The southern half of the market center of town was given over to a pursuit that Eric figured had to be universal: prostitution. Four street corners he passed were all occupied by call girls, a fifth was occupied by multiple call girls offering a group activity. Eric was so shocked by the concept of group sex that he bid them a good day without a direct answer to their entreat and continued walking. It was the sixth corner that provided an answer.

"A soldier of Greece? Here?" a courtesan asked from a window Eric passed to his right. "Are you not a long way from home...and require...comfort?" her speech slowed of shock when looking at Eric.

Eric looked the lady up and down, or at least what he could see of her hanging partway through the window. He figured her more or less of his age bracket, and a bit more rangy than his average expectation, but possessed of both stunning looks and figure. Though his preference were for the slightly larger ranks, similar to those of his hometown of Durgan, Eric could naught bur remind himself that his last lady was smaller than this harlot in every sense of the word – including directness of attitude and expression. His conclusion was direct, if not particularly civil: _I would not kick her from my bed unless she was better on the floor_, Eric silently admitted.

"Is something amiss?" Eric asked in response to her shocked expression and demeanor.

She frowned. "Why would a Grecian Hoplite carry no spear, a bow, two broadswords, two curved swords I do not recognize, and a Gladius?"

"A solid question milady, and evidence that you are well versed in military armaments," Eric admitted. "The simplest answer is that I am not Greek, though I am versed in borrowing their combat acumen."

Eric's answer only served to increase the shock on her face. "You are Durgan? Here?" she asked in a half-squeal.

"ATREBAS!" A man bellowed from the far corner of the nearby intersection. Eric jolted at the shout of his name, but did not turn to look in the direction of the shouting party. The ex-Durgan partially observed the approaching persons with his peripheral vision, careful to not let on that he was watching them.

A glance back to the harlot told that she knew that name well, and also that the call was directed at her. "Is he referring to you?" Eric asked quietly.

"Yes," the harlot replied evenly. "It was my father's name, Elonsius Atrebas," she added hurriedly.

It was Eric that froze in dread at the mention of the name. His mother had sworn that his father had been executed in the same fashion that Eric had been almost executed, but Eric figured it not impossible that two generations could avoid the sword of the executioner in the same fashion. If the harlot was correct, and if her sire was indeed also Eric's father, that meant that she was his half-sister.

And then he realized that for a few moments he considered taking her up on the offer. Such consideration only caused him to seize up even more, this time in disgust.

"Brion, my work-day has only started, and I was discussing a possible tour with this soldier from a southern land," the harlot noted with resignation.

"Silence, wench! If they won't put out, you don't stand there talking to them! You ask someone else!" Brion turned to Eric and shoved him. "You, out of the way! If you are not paying, you do not block my window! Time is money here!" Eric did not respond, still stuck in the morass of his prior thought, though rapidly working his way out of it. "Move, I said—"

"Shut up," Eric ordered after he regained some semblance of awareness. Whether related to the issue the Fates sent him on or not, Eric figured he needed to know what the lady in the window knew of this Elonsius Atrebas. There was a distinct possibility that two persons on the face of the world had the same name, though such was possessed of extreme odds at best. The greater likelihood was that the Elonsius Atrebas spoken of was indeed also Eric's father.

"What? You do not tell me—"

"If you do not shut up right the Hades now, I will personally reach down your throat and crush your soul with my bare hand, brigand," Eric replied with his command voice.

"Brigand?" the harasser asked in a rising pitch. A hand that went to a sword was answer enough as to how much offense he took to Eric's proclamation. Eric's hand went to the hilt of the enchanted katana and began the draw process of Iaijutsu, a single swift stroke straight from the sheath. The enemy was able to draw his sword partially, which interposed his arm between Eric and his neck, though in the end it did not matter. The crimson glow of the blade served to create a violet arc in the airspace behind his slash; the sword passed cleanly through forearm and upper arm, easily sped through the air gap behind and cleanly severed the neck of the target. The speed of the slash prevented much in the way of drag to draw blood from the victim, but what blood drawn was propelled across the street in a crimson streak that peppered four bystanders and the brigand's henchman. The final defiance of the deceased was his collapse; the body slammed downward and slightly fore, the arterial leak from the severed head seeping onto Eric's left foot.

Eric took a bare moment to inspect the corpse of the foe and then looked to his one henchman. He had hand on sword pommel, but was shaking to such an extent he would have been hard pressed to actually draw the blade in question. "Shall you now challenge me?" Eric shook part of the blood off the sword and onto the body of the deceased.

"N-n-no sire! Spare me!" the brigand's brigand said, accompanied by a half-pace backwards.

"Begone," and Eric's outlandish gesture with his sword only served to increase his panic.

"Here," and the harlot handed Eric a small rag to clean his blade. "That blade...magic?"

"Enchanted," Eric corrected. "We need to speak, milady," he prompted.

She sighed. "You just struck down my 'handler', so I doubt I shall get any business today. Now is as good a time as any to return home; we can speak there, away from prying ears," the last part being directed vertical a window to a pair of ladies hanging out the windows directly above the scene on the street.

Eric sheathed the katana, then pulled and held up two coin. "Anyone in the area capable of seeing to this body?"

"We shall," a watch officer replied. "I saw the whole thing; that was incredibly uncivil conduct, especially to a wizard," the corporal in the detachment said. Though none were willing to directly show it, Eric could sense that all of them were rather frightened by his presence.

"You have my thanks for the cleanup," Eric forked over the two golds nonetheless. "Lead the way," he requested of the harlot.

-x-

Eyes were on Eric and the harlot as they quickly shopped in the market for bread and butter, two staples at her household. More eyes dwelled on Eric, assuredly due to the incident with the harlot's handler. The ex-Durgan paid them the usual cursory attention, enough to verify threat/neutral and no more. Within ten minutes, the lady led the way out the northeast exit of the town and immediately off the beaten path into the forested area northeast of town. Eric expected a march of several miles; he was not disappointed.

"If I may ask, sir, what brings a Durgan Mercenary north into these remote lands? Or are you not allowed to tell?"

"A task not of Durgan's will or purview," Eric replied honestly.

She was silent for a few moments. "You were expatriated, then, kicked out and probably sentenced to execution, correct?"

"Aye, as was your father, Elonsius Atrebas," Eric replied.

"You knew Elonsius?" she asked.

"I knew of him, more than I knew him directly," Eric admitted. "His was said to be the best sword and shield in his class, before he was targeted with a bullshit charge and sent out to be executed. Even at the end he did his best, taking three of the four executioners to the grave."

"And you?" the harlot asked.

"Two of my executioners were close friends of mine. The other two, well, they will not be speaking of such political machinations again."

The harlot snorted at such thought. "This is it, the southern bound of the homestead," she said as they cleared the forest and entered what was a vegetable field. "This house was considered haunted; few would dare approach it. Elonsius settled here and set up his own blacksmith shop, eventually gaining the respect of the town behind us. He was killed years ago, street fight gone horridly wrong," she admitted. "It was fifteen on three, the watch said he reaped nine before he was overwhelmed. The survivors came looking for the rest of us."

"I daresay somewhere nearby stands a grave or series of graves to the vanquished?" Eric asked in a level tone.

"You dare say correct," the harlot replied.

"Beryl! We agreed you would not bring your work home!" A somewhat younger lady asked from among the rows of beans.

"This is not work, this is a savior," the harlot (Beryl) replied to her younger sibling. "He silenced my handler, so I decided a meal and restful night would be in order."

"Wow," the sibling's twin said as she stood up from the same bean field. "Wait, a Gladius? Is he Durgan?"

"He is an expatriate of Durgan, just as father was," Beryl replied. "Have Diamond, Talpa, and Vala returned?"

"I am here," Eric glanced behind to the speaker, an otherwise nondescript guy about five yards behind him in distance and seven years in age. "What was your crime, that saw you booted from the homeland?"

"I dared to court a Centara, and thereby threatened the political stability of the city," Eric admitted with no heat or hatred. "That was twelve years ago; I have wandered long and trained hard in those days since."

The younger guy smiled. "Any who threatens the political order of the Caecilius or Centara is a friend of mine." He presented a hand for a shake. "Talpa Atrebas. You?"

"Eric," he replied, giving the guy a shake.

"The sword you used to strike down her pimp, it is rumored to glow out of sheath, a crimson said to be of demon's blood and power," the youngest of the visible family asked from behind and to the right of Talpa.

"Well, rumors are dirty, nasty, invasive things," Eric replied. After a moment's hesitation, he pulled four inches of the blade, more than enough to reveal the crimson glow. "Occasionally, those rumors are correct at least in part. No demons were involved in the preparation of this sword, but it does glow and it does chop through people effortlessly."

"Enough, you dolts, let the traveler inside _before_ we grill him furiously," another guy ordered of the rest of the family.

A few extended tongues were the answer from the younger ones, but the questions halted while the two ladies climbed out of the bean fields to join. At least five acres of vegetables provided for the homestead, theoretically enough to provide a minimum of sustenance for six with some supplement purchased from town or gleaned from the land. Eric figured this was one of the major reasons that one (or more) of his potential sisters was prostituting herself; the urchin of weeks past had maintained it was 'to make ends meet', and that seemed as apt a description as any.

The inside of the dual-level house was just as nondescript on the outside. Basic furniture and accommodations for the residents were the order of the day, which Eric expected; even free of the dread influences and discipline of Durgan, a Durgan soldier would not have a long list of wants or needs in terms of material possessions. The same applied just as readily to Eric as it did to his erstwhile (possible) relatives: everything he carried in the massive gearpacks he wore was of some use or multiple uses in expected operations.

"Beryl! Bringing your work home?" an even-younger lady asked from one of the darker corners of the room.

"I thought you weren't going to – hey, is that an actual Durgan Gladius?" a second lady of the same or similar age bracket, asked.

"It is," Beryl replied. "Gather around, I believe Eric has some questions for us, and we for him."

Random objects around the room became random seats for the myriad of persons in the family, including a crate supplied for Eric. Given Durgan's predilection for smaller families, he found himself shocked that there were nine in the room other than himself, though he kept himself mostly passive as he stripped the bulk of his gear and set it against an outside wall in the main room. Eric was considered part of a 'small' family, only one child, with an average family being three persons and large ones being five. Nine (or possibly ten) was unheard of in Durgan.

Eric took the proffered seat and settled himself in lax, though easily at the ready to go for either a katana or his Gladius; theoretical relatives or not, Eric was not about to trust them until he knew exactly who he was dealing with. "Okay, before I begin, I do not believe I have been properly introduced, nor do I properly understand the bloodheritage at play."

"Diamond, your turn," Beryl said.

"Indeed," the older of the two men in the family stood. "Beryl is our oldest, at just barely over 28 years to her." Beryl nodded; Eric knew he would be hard-pressed to forget her forevermore, if for no other reason than his initial reaction. "I, Diamond, am the number two, at 26 years." Eric figured he looked a bit older than his age, probably from years of stress and months of his lifespan at the forge. "Crystal and Melane are twins, Crystal being the older by two inches descent of the sun."

"Not that it matters much," one of the two declared.

"In Durgan, it would matter, Crystal," Melane said to her (technically) older sister. "Would it not, sir?"

"Somewhat," Eric replied. There were no twins in his training group, but the group below his had two pairs – and their rank disputes were as acrimonious as the Captain-General's position. Eric made note that Melane kept her hair significantly longer than Crystal, and managed it with four bands down a reasonably long ponytail. "Rank officially means something in Durgan, and order of birth counts as one form of rank, but in the end one's mastery of the blade and the art of war is the ultimate deciding factor."

"Moving on," Diamond declared before the argument could continue. "The third brother of the family is Talpa, at the merry majority of 21 years." Eric nodded to the one he had already shook hands with. "Vala is the youngest of the singles remaining, at 19 years." Said lady, the one that had questioned him on his glowing sword, stood and bowed.

It was in the silence before Diamond continued that his comment sunk in. Given the presence of nine persons in the extended group, and only two of them being male with the other seven being rather obviously female, he could not figure out who was supposed to be the third guy in the rank. Eric almost missed the continued introduction on the matter, but snapped out of the distracted reverie fast enough.

"The last three are the 'terrible trio' of our rank, being Diana, Mikka, and Kiona Atrebas respectively. That is also their order of birth, again for what it counts for." Eric had little difference telling the three apart, as they were fraternal triplets and not identicals as were Crystal and Melane.

"In our case, not much," Diana replied. "We're too busy scheming and plotting to worry about who was born first."

"Unlike certain elder airheads among us," Kiona dropped in the conversation, as far as Eric could sense it was only for baiting the older twins.

"It fell to Elonsius and the older ones to name the trio," Beryl commented. "Our mother, Diana Fairweather, died giving birth to the three."

The room was silent for a few, but Diamond picked up after a moment. "And that leaves just one, whom we have never met. Before he was expelled under a false execution, Elonsius Atrebas was engaged to and had slept with Bellatrix Domitius. He was expelled before the first among our generation was born; word was sent to Elonsius by false-flag courier that the name of the son was Eric Atrebas. He was born half a year before Beryl, but we are unsure if he lives."

_That clinches it, this is the remainder of my family, born in absentia to Durgan_, Eric thought behind a passive, almost wooden face.

"If he does, he's the one last member of the family still in Durgan," Talpa commented. "The terrible trio is constantly plotting a way to get into Durgan and restore the family."

"To do so, you will need a little more than just a mindset, for according to the rolls of Durgan the Atrebas family is extinct," Eric replied pensively.

"They killed Eric?" Vala asked.

"Yes and no," Eric replied evenly.

"Which is it?" Beryl asked. "Either he is dead, or he is not."

Eric smiled, expecting that response. "In life, you will find that there are few absolutes, and even 'death' is one of those that can be skirted with proper planning." he sighed, preparing for the retelling of his sordid tale. "Eric Atrebas was charged with the rape of a lady, and I mean no offense to any profession performed by persons here, the victim being the village prostitute who could never seduce Eric."

"Not much of a courtesan, in that case," Vala replied offhand.

"Especially given how perverted father was," Beryl replied. "I would think that Eric would have been along those lines."

_I was, somewhat_, Eric thought but did not say. The amount of times he had been in bed with ladies was more than most of the Durgan trainees could match by combining their exploits. The real factor that stood out about such exploits was that it was spent with only one lady at the time of his departure from Durgan. "Tried and sentenced, Eric was led out to be executed. This is where the story diverges into two separate tales: the official version, that which is known to Durgan, and the unofficial version, the reality thus far lived. Officially, Eric Atrebas was executed, though two of his comrades were killed in the pursuant battle; effectively, there is no more Atrebas among Durgan."

"I sense a major twist in this story," Diamond commented.

"Your intuition is of the 'ex post facto' variety," Beryl groused. "Please continue, sir," she said.

"Unofficially, the two political hacks sent to execute Eric didn't quite live up to the task. Four were sent; the surviving two dutifully reported that Eric was dead, allowing him free roam of the world."

Beryl shifted her gaze slightly. "You?" Eric did not immediately answer. "Why didn't you say something before?"

"I was unsure if it was a trap to capture an unawares wanderer," Eric replied. "I grew up expecting at any time to be offed by the Mayor-General, and that incident came to me weeks prior to my class being rotated into the battle lines permanently."

"No trap, but I do want to see your sword to confirm it," Diamond requested.

"Be my guest," Eric replied evenly, removing the old Gladius from his sword-belt to pass around. The pommel plate was always engraved with the name of the user, and on proper Gladius the name of the owner was always carved into both the flat of the blade and into the handle under the leather binding. It was the last that proved to be the final say in this sword belonging to Eric Atrebas, for few knew of this last backup identifier on the sword. "If I may, I would like to see the Gladius of Elonsius Atrebas."

"I will retrieve it," Vala replied immediately. In mere moments she had delivered the blade. Eric checked the pommel plate of the weapon, and though slightly worn it indeed matched Elonsius. The flat of the blade held another worn indicator of the name, and though new wrapping around the handle of the weapon the third indicator matched – it was his blade, manufactured in Durgan given the discoloration of the blade's steel.

Eric found himself looking down the tip of his own gladius for a moment, though he quickly realized the blade was parallel to that of Elonsius Atrebas, for comparison purpose. "The coloring is just the same," Melane noted. "They're both authentic."

"Will you return?" Beryl asked, referring to Durgan.

"Not immediately," Eric replied. "There are far worse problems in Existence than a mere Caecilius in the Mayor-General's house."

-x-

Eric had been seen to a guest room in the upstairs that evening, after having told his story and presented them with a quandary. That he was related to them was not in question; he had the background, the looks of the family, and was definitely not a poser with a Gladius. Every one of the family had tried their luck against him, and every one lost on dint of both his blade skill and his ability to catch an incoming blade.

Eric had also adroitly proved his ability to not only use common (civilian) wizardry, but also combat wizardry. His lightning calls and flame attacks were some of the most spectacular and efficient methods of killing that any of the Atrebas family had seen. Again, there was little doubt that he was posing, and even less doubt that such skill was trained under Divine purpose at the least.

"What do we do?" Diamond asked the assembled extended family that Eric never knew.

"We would be fool not to take him up on the challenge posed," Kiona replied immediately. "Fool, I say. Such is an opportunity that comes once a lifetime—and a duty that may destroy us in our lifetime if unmet."

"It may also destroy us if we meet it," Melane commented. Crystal nodded in affirmation.

"He is right, though," Talpa admitted. "Forcing our way back into Durgan is not a good plan. First, we are unpersons to them, we don't exist. Second, if we could get in, there is no guarantee we would be trusted or even accepted. Third, as he said, there are bigger problems to deal with."

"Is it truly our problem?" Diamond asked.

"Ours, no," Vala replied immediately. "Everyone including us, yes," she defined the scope of the problem.

"So, it will eventually kill us?" Beryl asked.

"That is what I discerned from his tale," Crystal replied evenly. "It's probably a lot more complicated than what he told us, yet I do not see this ending well for us if we ignore it."

"It shall not end well for anyone that ignores it," Talpa replied evenly. "An event such as the slaying of all meaningful life in Existence is not something ignored."

"Indeed," Mikka replied. "Additionally, this gives us a way to force the issue in Durgan – spellcraft, enchanted weapons and devices, these things are not known to Durgan in general. We can provide ourselves a way to achieve greatness in the name of the city and the family with such skills."

"And Durgan does not take offense to the power of witchcraft," Diana added on the heels of her triplet's comment.

"Others might have something to say about it," Beryl replied. "And I am unsure if I want to learn it myself; borrowing such power would only draw the ire of higher beings, would it not?"

"Didn't he say that he had been commissioned by higher beings for this purpose?" Vala asked.

"The northern Gods, yes," Diamond replied adroitly. "Ours is a family whose necessary loyalty is to the southern divinities, the Greek Gods as is proper and Nike in specific."

"And would they care about this?" Vala gestured to the wall, but in reality meant Eric's tale. "You saw the book yourself, presented to him by one of Odin's wolves and one of Odin's ravens. I do not believe so, but he may be delusional; in contrast, we are not delusional and we all saw the text change from Nordic Runes to Greek calligraphy. We saw the images and displays in the book's illustrations of spells. We watched him use those spells, and we observed the aftermath. Is this the tale of a madman or an Atrebas?"

The gauntlet thrown down by Vala made a loud racket amongst her relatives. Many of them looked to the others for solace, but found only questions among their ranks. Only four came to consensus, being the triplets and the youngest of the singles.

"We will take up his offer," Diana commented; given she was the common mouthpiece for the triplets, the others knew she meant all three. "Even if it means open defiance of the elders, we will act."

"Six will act," Crystal replied. "Eric will not say so, but he cannot do this himself. Many hands makes for light battles."

"Many blades, and now many spells," Talpa said.

Beryl snorted. "If you will go, we all will go. No sense letting you run headlong into battle without the proper support of the rest of the family, Vala."

-x-

"Awake yet, Eric?" Without prompt, the door creaked open slightly to admit Vala's head and shoulders.

"_**Holy Rays of Light gather, a column of astral energy ascends to the heavens in Light Pillar!**_" Eric executed the spell he had prepared to cast, effectively unawares that someone was watching him. The spell was targeted within a special rune Eric had prepared on the table, a rune that prevented spellcraft damage to anything not specifically inside the rune. The small boulder inside the rune, however, was disintegrated from pure energy transfer caused by the spell, ending up as nothing more than a faintly-pearl-colored glowing dust redistributed around the room.

"Oh, wow, it's beautiful!" Vala's declaration had drawn Eric's intention. "This is...holy energy? The energy of the Gods?" Vala had entered and held her hand out to catch some of the slowly-descending dust.

"Most of the Gods would know this spell or be able to use it," Eric replied. "All would be able to use it with far more power, range and radius than I. Few of the Gods would use it; most of the divinities are attuned to an element or a classification of spellcraft, and would use those spells in preference to an element that is not part of their repertoire."

"Can people learn to specialize?" Vala asked.

"You can," Eric replied. "It is not recommended. Not all light is good, and not all dark is bad. You may find yourself attuned to a base element, and you may find yourself leaning toward those spells, but true power is in adaptability; specialists do not always adapt well."

"Oh," Vala half-squeaked. "Is that how you will do what the Rune Maidens want? Adapt to the problems you find?"

"That is one way," Eric replied. "I cannot tell you how I will react, I do not know the problems."

"I understand," Vala replied. "We spoke at length last night. We nine are willing to learn it all from you, whatever you are willing to teach us. We understand what is coming, and we want to fight it, just as you will. Will you allow us?"

Eric could not help but gape at his new-found younger sister, but not for her willingness to learn so much as the orders given him by the Fates. Eric had been ordered to find a group not dissimilar from himself; though many families can be a study in polar opposites, his extended family was no more dissimilar from he than the individual rabbits in a given warren would be dissimilar to each other. He had been told to find a group willing to learn; Vala's request was about as blunt as one could be and still be civil about it. Without doubt, Eric knew this was the group he was looking for.

"Is something amiss, brother?" Vala asked in the short silence thereafter.

"A reminder of a conversation past," Eric replied evenly. "I will instruct those who are willing to learn, but the nine of the family is the most I can reliably train."

"Is Eric ready?" the voice of Diamond asked from the stairs below the main sleeping quarters.

"Yes," Vala answered immediately. "We will take you to the grave site," she noted. "It is the least in confirmation we can give you of your father's fate."

Eric nodded solemnly. Without word, he added his gladius and both katanas to his belt, then simply gestured to the door. Vala preceded him out and down the stairs to the main room, where the other eight were gathered.

"You did tell him?" Beryl asked after a moment's silence. Vala nodded in response, all but confirming this was a group effort on their part.

"When I left the training camp, I was told to seek a group not dissimilar to myself, willing to learn and willing to do the detail. This is entirely voluntary, you have the right to walk." The one thing Eric did not want to subject them to was this nightmare duty if they were unwilling.

"We officially volunteer," Diana answered for the triplets.

"We came to consensus last night, brother. We are in," Beryl declared.

"Just, one question: can you raise the deceased?" Talpa asked.

"Talpa! We agreed we would not ask that!" Crystal barked sharply at the youngest of the brothers.

"No, fair question," Eric cut off any kind of group reprisal. He brought a finger to his temple. "This is your greatest weapon, your ability to think, reason, judge and discern. You must ask if you are to understand, and you must understand if you expect to survive this detail. Do not hesitate to ask, you will need to know." Eric closed his eyes and thought back to his training in White Wizardry. "There are spells to raise the deceased, but to do so requires far more power than even the low-level Gods have access to. Something relating to the remnants of the deceased soul, I forget most of the details involved but I do remember that most of the Gods cannot do it."

"Oh," Talpa groused.

"The best I can do is temporarily recall their spirits, that you may speak to them one final time. When done, however, it cannot be done again." The look in the eyes of those around him was answer enough. "Think hard about what you wish to say, you will only have a few moments to speak."

-x-

Eric completed the necessary inscriptions and invocations for the rune above the grave of Elonsius. Eric's hand hesitated with each step in the preparation of the Spirit Rune; he was about to summon the deceased spirit of the father he never knew, and unlike what he told his siblings he had no clue what he was going to say, if anything, to the man.

"The rune is prepared," Eric said calmly, masking his inner dread at what he was about to do. "Now for the actual invocation."

A few murmurs arose from behind Eric. "We are ready, Eric," Beryl said.

"_**The bounds of space and time to be rent, the will of one ensconced in the Rune of Spirit shall return to these mortal lands for Spirit Communication,**_" Eric chanted the spell from the page of his tome on the subject of spirit calling and communication.

Again the rune formed a blue column, with the column collapsing down into the translucent blue illusion of the spirit of Elonsius Atrebas. There was more than enough detail to the illusion – and this time some varied colors – that Eric's siblings could easily recognize him. "One last call," the illusion said. "Thank you, son of mine never seen."

Eric nodded solemnly, having nothing to reply.

"You know not all the Caecilius and Centara are corrupt. Keep that in mind going forward."

"I shall," Eric replied evenly.

"My sons, my daughters, you ten have done the family proud," he said. "You are what is left of the family—I had a semi-secret half brother, but now he is joined the ranks of the Einherjar as I have. In Durgan, we were anathema: rote soldiers on the frontlines, exceptional with the blade but of no consequence after we lost the Mayor-General position. Outside the walls, outside the Bladesmen, you have proved we are the resourceful mercenaries and fighters that Durgan wants to be."

"Outstanding," Diamond said offhand. "At least we're doing something right."

"You do more than simply 'something' right my son," the illusion countered. "You have learned many things more than a simple laborer, and your mastery of the blade is not to be downplayed. It is not enough to do so; to become truly great, and Eric knows what 'truly great' is, you will need to learn to understand. Clear?"

"Yes, sir!" all except Eric replied in unison.

"Time is short, so listen well, all ten of you. Eric is guilty of _under_stating the nature of the problem the Fates called him to. It's...bad; in places, the war has already begun, in others it is eons away from commencing. We deceased, we are the last line; someone has to take the front, and that is what the Fates want of you, and I mean all of you. Clear?"

"Yes, sir!" all except Eric replied in unison.

"Eric will instruct you in the arts he has already learned. The Norns, the Fates of the Northlanders, sent him north to find you, knowing that you could help in this task that threatens everyone," he continued. Eric could already tell the illusion was beginning to fade, but not quickly; it was acting more powerful, more clear than the prior use of the spell. "Learn what you can from Eric, both physically and mentally. This will not be an easy task for any; spellcraft will lessen your burdens both off and on the battlefield. Will you do so?"

"Sir!" all, this time including Eric, replied in unison.

"Eric, first of my sons but last seen, know this: I had heart that you would retake the Mayor-General's position, but the deviousness of the Caecilius is without bounds. Even still, these past five years I have watched the last of your training under the Rune Maidens, and even the Valkyrie are convinced you may help stymie the coming of Ragnarok. You alone have become more destructive than the legions of Rome or the Bladesmen of our homeland. It is time for you to show your siblings what it means to master the battlefield."

"It shall be done, father," Eric replied immediately.

The illusion was clearly fading into the morning light, though it was not completely gone as of yet. "Remember, all of you, where you hail from, who you are related to, and to what you have been asked. Remember that I will always love you and watch your exploits from Valhalla, wherever your duties will take you. My sword, for all Existence," and the mostly-faded illusion drew his Gladius in traditional salute, held in front of the face with point skyward and the flat to the assembled sons and daughters.

Ten such swords were drawn and raised in response, and the ten completed Durgan's chant. "My sword, in eternal defense," all ten said in echo.

The illusion faded beyond contact, the rune combusted and with it went the mortal remains of Elonsius Atrebas. After a few moments of staring at the empty space once occupied by the illusion, Eric turned to his brothers and sisters. On several there were tears, on all were clenched jaws and stiff backs.

Eric was the first to sheath his sword, an action that caused a ripple effect in his family. "Any questions before we begin?"

"The Fates," Beryl prompted. "Who are they and why do they call us to duty? We are not Norse."

"Honest answer? The Greek divinities we are traditionally beholden to are unconcerned with things such as the destruction of all Existence, which sadly includes themselves. The Norns call from all walks of life and all pantheons of divinities; I trained with Egyptians, Japanese, Norse, Greek, Roman, Celts, no hesitation. The end of the world does not pick and choose who to kill off; we are all dead unless we do something about it."

"When do we begin?" Vala asked.

"Immediately," Eric replied.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

And here the pace and purpose changes.

The first order of empirical expansion begins with the students the Rune Maidens trained. Each successive generation of personnel teach a group of students in their own, and so on and so forth. The catch is, after each successive training the teachers can begin training another group. The downside is that not all the instructors are conversant in all forms of wizardry (even Eric falls into this category, having no training in summoning skills). The process may not burn itself out, but progress becomes harder and harder as it goes on...

On the matter of Eric's family, well, let's just say they are a bit...bizarre. And what they are about to go through with will only serve to amplify that. Eric has his work cut out for himself, in terms of both getting to know his family and in terms of training them. The Fates never said the job would be easy, and this is about to prove it. On a similar note, you can probably guess that they will be hanging around as part of the story themselves, maybe even enough to warrant some of their own arcs. Trust me on this if nothing else, with the series of events about to go down, it will be pretty wild.

On this chapter, I have no further notes at the time. I am almost ready to continue the existing arc of Archangel's Amazing Adventures and probably will begin the pre-write for the 33rd chapter here in the next few.

NEXT UP: Nine in relation become Eric's students in the arts of war and wizardry. You know, the Fates enjoy running Eric through the strangest problems possible...

* * *

Review Replies: Four reviews for the fourth chapter. Amazing that such an obscure work is getting this kind of attention :)

**Alex Yamato**: I'm trying to keep the chapter length well under 20K words per chapter, including reference notes at the end of the story. Chapter lengths of 12K words (story material) are actually less than half the length of the latter chapters of Jokers Wild, strangely enough. Different story, different method of telling.

On the matter of Eric Atrebas, you're seeing the problem with writing two arcs of the same timeline parallel, though I'll let you keep guessing at his bizarre fate and how he gets there. An Intel Analyst should have already pieced the major details together, though, just off background from Jokers Wild :)

**Necroblade**: Keep in mind that while Eric may be beyond a common mortal threat, there are all manner of uncommon, unconventional and especially asymmetrical threats that are just as dangerous as Eric's combat wizardry can be. The latter is the greatest threat; a foe that is incapable of matching Eric's wizardry skills may simply opt to engage him in some other fashion, limiting or eliminating his ability to counter with wizardry. In short, do not focus on one aspect of war, because the entire battlefield is open to those with the will to use it.

You do have a point with some of the old heroes of myth, but it may be a while before Eric goes head to head with some of them, or worse threats :)

On your beta work, you mentioned that no innocents died. That is the point in the section about the arrowheads. Eric got lucky with his reaction and the innocents (the harlot and the madam) did not die.

**Knives91**: The wolves made a brief appearance, but the other mysterious travelers will make their appearances in chapters long to come. I do not forget; everyone has their purpose, and some have purposes far greater still.

**MantaArms1989**: For what it is worth, there will be much more of all of the above in chapters, sections and sets to come. Striking the balance is not the easiest of tasks, but it is good to see that I am doing well so far :)

Well, you could call this a prologue and you would be correct, but it would be more accurate to say that the Jokers Wild is really an offshoot (side story) of the end of the Multimage Chronicles. Of course, I thoroughly expect the Jokers Wild and its intendant side stories to be just as large as the Multimage Chronicles, maybe longer given some of the things I have planned, and no less bloody.

**THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS**! The more, the merrier! (or alternately: the more, the bloodier :)

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: No outstanding gripes from last chapter. Thanks due to my stalwart beta-reader **Necroblade** for the assistance.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): This is a premise of my wizardry system, and will be thoroughly explained in experimentation in chapters to come.

* * *

Included Works:

ANIME

—Sailor Moon (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon): Anyone well versed in BSSM should recognize the names of two of Eric's relatives: Beryl and Diamond. I'll leave what kind of effect that shall have up to your imagination :)

—Ronin Warriors (Yorioden Samurai Troopers): Talpa Atrebas is derived from Lord Talpa, the big bad of aforementioned anime series. Whether or not he turns out to be big or bad in this case, only fate shall tell.

VIDEO GAMES

—Interstate '82: Yes, you read that right. Eric's comment about reaching down someone's throat and 'crushing their soul with his hand' is derived from a very frustrated complaint from the main character of said game. The comment in I82 is delivered before the US government tries cooking the protagonist with a SDI particle cannon not quite as powerful as the GDI Ion Cannon, but with a fast enough recharge time to make latter superweapon green with envy (the SDI cannon has a fire rate of about 3 shots a minute). I am not making this up, you spend a whole level trying to outrun the kill-sat, and you have to be on top of your maneuvering game to get it right.

* * *

Spell Registry:

COMBAT WIZARDRY scope

Combat Attack Branch (Black Wizardry, Assault Wizardry)

—Light Pillar: MinDR of 30.000, no material components required. The Light Pillar spell generates a column of light (Holy-element) energy between two points in space. Against most targets, this spell causes only minor energy damage, though against creatures or persons weak to Holy-element attacks the damage is increased exponentially. Energetic damage from the column is calculated at 100 Joules per DR of the caster, with a diameter of 1 foot per 5 DR and a height of 1 foot per DR. The Light Pillar is stationary once cast; it is entirely possible to generate the column in front of a moving target and watch as the target simply moves through the beam for extensive damage. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Holy Rays of Light gather, a column of astral energy ascends to the heavens in Light Pillar**_

—Stone Shard: MinDR of 15.000, one stone of any kind larger than a common pebble is needed for the spell (Consumed in the casting process). This spell must be used in the vicinity of or standing on stone to have any effect, as the shards generated by the spell are cored from the stone. When chanted, the spell draws an amount of stone shards from the living stone nearby (preferably under the stone held for the casting) and levitates the rods nearby the caster. One shard will be generated per 1.0 DR of the caster in common use, though there is a variant of this spell that limits the amount of shards created (see below for variants). Once the shards are generated, four commands are available to the caster: **reorient**, **center**, **ring**, and **release**. **Reorient** causes the spikes to aim in the direction the caster is pointing without centering on a target. **Center** causes the spikes to aim directly at the target that the caster indicates by pointing. **Ring** causes the spikes to point directly outward from the caster in a radial cloud, typically aiming in every direction. **Release** looses the spikes on their present heading at high velocity. The duration of the release command's effect is based on the caster's DR: for every 5 DR, the spikes gain one second of acceleration, which typically amounts to 100 yards maximum range per 1.0 DR of the caster, though the maximum range gain drops off at higher levels (atmospheric resistance). FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The rocks of this land shall give unto the sky a cloud of Stone Shards. **_VARIANT CASTING: _**The rocks of this land shall give unto the sky (X) Stone Shards**_, where (X) can be replaced by a numeric amount if less than the maximum amount of shards is needed.

Combat Defense Branch (Shell spells)

—Flare Guard: MinDR of 10.000, no material components required, target must be in atmosphere to cast. This spell creates an immobile wall of trapped flame measuring 1 inch thick per 10 DR of the caster with 100 degrees Fahrenheit of flame temperature per 1 DR, with a duration of ten seconds per DR. Outside the wall, it has no effect on its surroundings; a fly could skirt the wall with 1/32 of an inch of clearance and be completely unharmed. Any object breaching the wall is immediately subject to the severe temperature contained within, and most common objects are incinerated with less than a second's exposure. Objects incinerated or melted inside the barrier that leave remnants will cause those remnants to collect inside the barrier (as per a _**reverse shell**_ spell), and when the spell expires or is dispelled those remnants will fall to the ground below the barrier in question (or will float in place if in zero gravity conditions). This spell has a counterpart Rune Invocation (_**Flare Guard**__**Rune**_) that has no additional requirements or properties beyond the above listed, excepting that it is drawn in place as a Rune instead of chanted as a spell. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**A wall of hellfire stands to shield this locale for the duration of Flare Guard**_.

CIVILIAN WIZARDRY scope

SPECIALIST WIZARDRY scope

Necromancy Branch (handling of the deceased and spirits pertaining to the deceased)

—Spirit Communication: MinDR of 25.000, requires Spirit Rune above or below target deceased and requires at least the head of the deceased. This spell can be used outside of atmosphere but has little purpose without the ability to hear the spirit speaking (telepathy can be used, but only in the case of a Spirit Communication invoked by a Transcendent or greater). The spell will recall the soul or spirit of the deceased sentient being from its new location for a chat with the necromancer and any persons in the vicinity. The extension of the spirit thus called is a semi-visible illusion produced inside the bounds of the Spirit Rune, and due to the nature of the communication the link degrades gradually until connection is lost. The maximum link time for the spell is 5 seconds per DR of the caster. Once the spell expires, it destroys the remnants of the physical form of the deceased, consumed as the link medium for calling on the deceased. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The bounds of space and time to be rent, the will of one ensconced in the Rune of Spirit shall return to these mortal lands for Spirit Communication**_

—


	6. Eyes

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 6: Eyes)

(Time elapse: 12 years 8 months after departure from Durgan, 7.5 months after Eric arrived at family's residence)

The vision of days past came back to haunt him; the scene he saw in the nights prior to meeting his estranged family had come true to a tee. Eric had indeed found himself teaching a group that wanted to learn everything possible, though for very different reasons among them. The pikes, Gladius swords and myriad of knives among them bespoke as much about the difference in fighting styles and mindsets as their individual habits and schedules.

The initial vision showed four with pikes, two with swords, and all with knives; it was not overlong before that vision was confirmed. Rather than simply play through in a rendition of the incomplete ethos of Durgan, Eric had immediately segmented the group by common mindset and apparent aptitude. Nowadays, the group continued to use their preference of weapons, but rather than forcing everyone to learn a basic amount of everything, Eric focused on training each to their individual strengths and how to use them to minimize or eliminate weaknesses.

Training was conducted in the same fashion Eric had trained in under the Rune Maidens: physical combat, magical skills, and logical skills. The intention was a complete operations doctrine that trained them not into soldiers or weapons, but into living problem-solvers. The distinction was the greatest part of their training they were not expecting, but relished even so.

"Soldiers are expended, weapons are used and discarded, but a problem-solver moves on to the next task when done," Diamond summed it up.

"Indeed," Eric replied, surprised that someone could mirror his own thoughts on the subject so adroitly. "Never consider yourself less than what you really are: trained to solve problems without regard to who is causing the problem or why. By the same token, never assume you will have the answers to every problem, or that every problem will have a workable solution."

"Understood," Crystal replied.

"The scenario for tonight is thus," Eric began; "You have entered a town and the inn within. They claim a problem with a a demonic rider that haunts the town and attacks persons outside at night, sometimes severely enough to kill them. What actions do you take?"

The format of the training challenge was simple: Each would give a response to Eric's posed challenge and then Eric would reply with a custom variation on the thread based on their actions. Each trainee would be required to explain the happenings thus far and continue extrapolating the scenario until a logical conclusion was achieved. Once the first scenario was played out, the next member of the family would build the next theoretical operation and would become the setting master. It would continue until mandatory curfew, at which point everyone would turn in for some much-needed rest.

"Mine would be to conduct recon on the enemy and figure out where the 'demon' comes from. Once I have that, I would then begin to determine what manner of threat I am facing. I would then conduct a thorough instruction campaign to help the village suppress this threat."

Eric nodded. If anything, Beryl had a penchant for thinking two or three steps forward toward the completion of a given goal. "Very well, consider your next step carefully: your target is determined to be a human raider operating from a base camp four miles north of town, with two men in support and two camp wenches taken slave from a similar operation. Diamond, your response to the initial threat?"

"My response would be a direct defense, by way of entrapping the target in a _**Reverse Shell**_ and then observe the target from a safe distance in case it is capable of escaping the entrapment."

"Your target is entrapped, and reveals itself to be a minor demon as told. It was able to break out of your entrapment – barely – by way of a barrier breaker spell. Think hard about your next actions, because your life is on the line now. Crystal, Melane, it is now your turn," Eric prompted.

"Crystal and I will place ourselves in the line of attack of this 'demon', intent to draw it to us and get it away from the people in general of the town. What is the method of attack used by this foe?"

"Your foe uses a common short sword from horseback," Eric replied. "You are able to interpose yourself between the attacker and any potential victims, which in this case makes you the next victim. The horsemen charges; prepare your next moves. Talpa?"

"My intent is not unlike Diamond's intent: entrap it when it comes, though I use a pair of suspended animation runes to do so – one to suspend the target, one to suspend the suspended encapsulation." It was something that Talpa had found worked with extreme alacrity on an unawares foe (Beryl in particular) and was extremely hard to counter with even Eric's aptitude for spellcraft.

"Your suspension attempt has worked on the target and horse; both are ensnared, and then the runic column that entrapped is itself suspended. This combination leaves horse and rider vulnerable to your ministrations, such as they are. Prepare your next moves; Vala, it is your turn."

"I would approach this in the same fashion that Beryl would, track the foe from its activities to its origin point," Vala replied evenly, hoping that Eric didn't throw her for a loop in reusing an existing strategy.

"A sound solution," Eric replied. "You track the demon undetected to its origin, a summon circle enchanted by a lady summoner. Plan your next actions accordingly. Terrible Trio, your turn," Eric replied.

"Absolutely love how he calls us that," Diana replied.

"We've earned it," Kiona replied.

"Our intention was to conduct espionage, elder, using a limited telepathy spell to divine secrets and hopefully his origin. Our plan and next actions hinges on that outcome," Mikka answered the question straight up, bringing her sister's 'gutter-conduct' to an end.

"Straight-stealth solution?" Eric asked in counter. All three nodded. "Well, your attempt at getting inside his mind failed. You have gained no hard intel on him by spellcraft psionics, however your attempt did not alert the target. Begin planning on your next actions. Beryl?"

Beryl nodded. "Scenario: after tracking the supposed demon to his campsite, I have determined that there are three men holding two slaves and raiding town from a camp four miles north of the town. Erm, in this case would it be worthwhile to conduct training for the town, or just eliminate the raiders?"

"Either would be effective, the question is how much time you want to expend on it," Eric replied.

"Is there a suitable magic-user in town that I could train for this task?" Beryl asked in counter.

"Yes. State your method," Eric said.

"I would identify the threat to the mage in question and make sure she is competent in the use of a lightning spell to silence the 'demonic raider'."

Eric nodded. "Your training takes, and the Mage in town is able to silence the raider. One got away, though is not coming back with a posse for the Mage. One of the slaves is killed in the process of the rescue, but the other survives unscathed." A few grunted in quizzical confusion about how they would have lost a hostage. "Remember, lightning is an area-effect attack. It kills the struck individual rather readily, but the lightning can jump from person to person if they are close. Using _**Stone Shard**_, _**Steel Shard**_, or an Ice-based non-area spell would have been preferable. Technically you have a victory, though you may want to work on reducing casualties. Diamond, your turn." Beryl nodded, but said nothing. She wasn't the worst offender in the collateral casualties department, that distinction (usually) went to the terrible trio.

"As I have pretty much declared my presence to this minor demon and failed to trap him, I will skip the panic and go right to clearing away from him with a _**teleport**_ spell. When physically away from him, I will use a _**Detect Element**_ spell to get some further word on the target."

"The marauding demon you face is classified as a Darkness element, with strong secondaries in Fire and Earth," Eric replied. "Do you have an action planned?"

"No. Request for time?" Diamond replied.

"Granted, you have a few moments to plan for your next move," Eric replied. "Crystal and Melane," Eric prompted.

"We have baited the horsemen to charge upon us; does he show favor on one of us or just a wild charge?"

"He favors Crystal," Eric replied evenly.

Melane nodded. "I will use a _**teleport**_ spell to appear behind him as he charged. A shot of the bow to the back is my method of dealing offense, as Crystal teleports out of his line of attack at the last moment."

Given that Eric had seen the twins use teleport maneuvering in just such a fashion, he gave them the benefit of the doubt in this case. "Your distraction draws the enemy horseman forward and your shot strikes but is not enough to kill. Next move?"

"A shot to the rump of the horse to prevent horse and rider from escaping."

"Your shot misses both horse and rider," Eric replied. "Think of your next actions. Talpa, you shall continue."

"Before I continue, am I allowed to assume that I have a relic weapon?" Talpa replied.

"You may, consider it a wide-edge spear with vorpal (2) four times over and miscellaneous abilities not pertinent to this battle." The wide-edge spear was the same as what he used in combat training with frequency and skill.

"Well, with the right tool for the right job, I proceed up to the stasis field and assault the target as he is locked down. The first thing I do is sever the head of the steed and the demon. Works or not?"

"Nope, enemy armor exceeds the power of your weapon," Eric dropped in as a twist. "Hope you have a secondary plan, brother."

"I know an optimal spell for just such a task, but I cannot fairly use it," he grumbled.

"Not one of us can use said spell," Diamond commented evenly.

"_**Indignation**_ is out of my grasp, just the same, but it would be a wonderful way to get the target's attention," Eric admitted. "Points for the really direct and single-strike approach, but you will need to cough up a realistic retort."

"_**Thunder Spree**_," Talpa replied, a spell he did not particularly favor but one which he could not deny its usefulness.

"Okay, _**Thunder Spree**_ gets you a decent result," Eric replied. "Multiple strikes on the target. Since it is in stasis, you are unable to tell how effective. Think of your next moves. Vala, your turn."

"I am faced with a summoner that called a demon. Given this is no mere brigand, my only real option is to quell the summoner and prevent the demon being called again," Vala replied. "I will wait until the demon is recalled, then I will fall upon the Summoner with Gladius."

"Your patience is apt, and the summoner departs northbound before you descend upon her with blade. Her cudgel is less than ample defense against your blade, and within a few strokes the summoner is downed. Anything else?"

"Verify the body," Vala replied. "Sever her head to ensure it is done."

Eric smiled; he did not like such wanton cruelty, but in the case of someone who could summon a demon the best bet was to make sure the job was done right the first time. A high-power demon with a grudge was a nigh-impossible foe in every work Eric had read on the subject. "Your blade is swift and the summoner is decapitated. Your deed is done; your ranking is above sufficient, using stealth, surprise, and proper tactics to take down a superior foe at a moment of weakness, as well as ensuring there will be no reprisal from the target. Triplets, it is your turn."

"We failed on our first attempt to gather intel, but this will not sway us. The town he is attacking, is it a town of single-story buildings, or more?"

"In this case, a town of larger buildings, some as high as four levels above," Eric replied.

"Is the foe meandering for targets nearby the taller buildings?" Kiona asked.

"His pattern is erratic, going between buildings, through alleys, avoiding open areas for the most part."

"We will try to get on a roof of a taller building nearby him, and use a heavy object to crush him," Diana dropped their plan.

"Your attack succeeds, a blow enough to knock him from the horse and splay him out, but not enough to kill. What is your next action?" Eric asked.

"Can we tell if the foe is human or demon?" Mikka asked in retort.

"Given how fast he rolled the barrel off himself, it is a demon," Eric replied. "Action or time?"

"Time," Diana requested.

Diamond stood up. "I have settled on the use of an _**Astral Bomb**_ spell; I am allowed to use that, right?" Diamond requested.

"You are," Eric replied having seen Diamond use it with some assistance from the other spell-casters and his enchanted items. It went without saying that in short order he would be able to use it with only item assistance and thereafter completely on his own. "Your attack fails; the enemy is native resistant to Light-element attacks. Best you come up with a Plan C, brother, and do it right now."

"I'm out of ideas," Diamond replied. "_**Water Shell Compression**_?" he threw out as a wild-ass guess.

Eric made him wait for a few moments before answering. "An effective attack," Eric replied evenly. "You compress the demon in question and his steed to a slightly-glowing orange paste. What is your action?"

"Enshell the remnants into a sphere of water and permanently seal the sphere above the fountain in the town square. It will take time, but I would surround the sphere with a stone statue enchanted to seal the demon's remains for eternity."

Eric chuckled grimly; with the right combinations of enchantments, many unconventional things were possible and Eric encouraged such inventive thinking in the face of a foe that could never be defeated conventionally, such as a mid-power demon on horseback. "Your water shell holds and is ensconced in a fountain built over the well. The magic power and some creative spellcasting is used to regenerate the watery grave the demon is trapped in, and provides fresh and clean water to the town forevermore. Over the ensuing decades, the sealed demon becomes a tourist attraction and a monument to the power and purpose of wizards. Outstanding plan, brother."

Diamond bows for the assembled crowd as Beryl starts up a small bonfire. It was not often that Eric gave such good marks for the logic section, mainly because the family had a habit of being extremely direct in solving problems. "We are up again," Crystal declared. "We were last taking shots at this guy's back, or at least Melane was. Is there anyone else in town capable of assisting in bringing down the erstwhile slasher?"

"Yes, the town guard is out in force but are not cued to the threat. What do you do?"

"Crystal will raise a signal in terms of a light flare while shouting for assistance," Melane replied. "I will nock and loose another shot."

"Your shot is taken and provides another non-fatal injury. The call for assistance goes unheeded; the light flare actually serves to cause minor panic in the guards at the time they saw it."

"With two non-fatal strikes, what possible combat utility might this foe still have?" Crystal asked.

"Little," Eric replied; "After the second hit, the foe turns and attempts to flee. What is your response?"

"Is he fleeing into town or away from it?" Crystal asked.

"Into town," Eric replied.

"Another arrow shot," Melane said.

"Another miss against both horse and rider before he turns a corner and is out of sight. His direction of travel can be estimated; plan your next actions accordingly. Talpa, please continue."

"I have ensnared the demon in a stasis field and struck with thunder," he began the next phase. "Are my environs suitable to use, say, a _**Fireball**_ without collateral casualty?"

"You may," Eric replied evenly. Talpa nodded execute; "Your fireball ejected the target from the stasis fields, the trauma apparently enough to render disabled both steed and rider. Make your next move."

"I will strip the helmets from horse and rider, to take their heads and finish the battle."

"You decapitate the horse – a Nightmare, by the way – though the helm of the demon is one with his armor and cannot be removed. Further actions are available."

"His armor, is it steel?" Talpa asked.

"It is," Eric replied.

"I will use _**Steel Shard**_ to convert his armor into flechettes that I redirect back down into the holes created in his armor by the spell," Talpa said with a bit of a malicious grin.

"This one is done," Eric admitted. "Enough damage and his body is consumed in a minor hellfire. One less demon haunting the world. Terrible Trio, you are next."

Diana stood up and bowed. "We just flattened the demon in our scenario with a barrel, though he shrugged it off fairly quickly. How heavy is his armor?"

"Light; the enemy appears human or nearly so, but is armored only in light leather armor and such."

The three sisters look to each other, and nod. "We will teleport down to ground level and inflict stab wounds on him with relic-enchanted knives," Diana said.

Eric gave them pause with his silence for a few moments; he used the patterns in the flames to determine the outcome of the action. "Your swarming attack is successful; after about a half-dozen stabs, the orange blood within the target begins spilling and burning on contact with the dirt. Left in this fashion, his own blood becomes his funeral pyre, though the blaze of the dying demon also sets a minor fire up in town. State your response."

"Call a raincloud," Mikka replied immediately. "Rains will extinguish flames in sufficient quantity."

"Your rains quash the flames, leaving the threat and the fire extinguished. Your scenario is done, though the complete directness you have shown is not always the best solution. Back to the twins," Eric said.

"We have shot our foe twice, but not fatally and he is now fleeing. You said his direction is predictable; we will teleport onto that path and continue taking shots," Crystal continued the scenario.

Eric again made a show of considering the results. "Your next shot is ample to bring him out of the saddle and onto the ground. Down and disabled, he is captured by the watch and will now face a court for his crimes. So ends this scenario, it appears you all passed with reasonable results, though I would like to see more circumspection in coming exercises. Headfirst assaults are not always the answer. Beryl, you have the next scenario."

Beryl stood up and began presenting her challenge for the evening. When it began with the phrase 'an inn has a posted contract to find and eliminate' Eric knew it was going to be tough. If anything, Beryl was far more imaginative about difficult things to kill.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 13 years 0 months after departure from Durgan)

The so-called 'terrible trio' seemed to love doing battle with the other members of the family (excepting the elder twins); Eric wondered if it was some form of character flaw among the three, or if it was just a predisposition to doing battle against others (not an unheard trait among Durgan and its descendants). Either way, the three had a penchant for doing battle, even when wagered against the ranks of Durgan, enough so that they could come up with methods of battle and ambush that surprised even the veteran Eric. When married to Eric's knowledge of spellcraft, things only became more and more devilish until Eric began wondering what manner of demon he had forged.

Today, the demons in action took their liking to Diamond – their common foe, though one well apprised of their ways and even more so suited to facing off against them. The whole family were practitioners of Durgan's main tenet: offense built from the defense, though some relied more on the offense than the defense. Diamond, much as his namesake, always proved to be a stalwart under attack; even Eric had trouble defeating some of his more inventive defense methods, often having to rely on outright power to compromise his brother as opposed to skill or finesse. The only real advantage Eric maintained over any of the Atrebas was his rather rare Force Mage skills, a skill which seemed to have no real rhyme or reason how it was determined who could adequately use.

Today was no different from average when Diamond went head to head against the other members of the family. Such an encounter even qualified as 'formulaic' in execution, though depending on how creative the other members of the family were the battle may or may not end in a 'formulaic' victory for the eponymous 'defender' of the battle (typically Diamond).

_The first chance for a battle to derail in favor of the offense comes at the beginning_, Eric remembered from his analysis of battles big and small over the years. In terms of tactic, it was often the preferred method of the triplets and Beryl. _No surprise there_, Eric figured, considering how the Trio would try to begin the offense.

The battle arguably began with Diamond's first defensive measure, a basic defensive shell, the actual first exchange began with a spell to generate a large smoke ball, similar to the _**Fireball**_ spell Eric favored for area targets. Though far from explosive, the winds generated by the rapid expansion of smoke would disrupt those unprepared for it with ease; in this case, Diamond's shell had little bearing on the smoke but stopped the pressure. Still, by Eric's guess it took only four long moments for Diamond to lose visual of two of the sisters. Two moments more and even Eric lost visual to the evolving battle.

"_**Shell Disrupt**_!" Diana chanted loudly, the rear-end of a spell tailor-made to break defensive shell spells and enchantments. What visible flair there would have been from the defense and offense conflicting was obscured by the thick layer of smoke enshrouding the battlefield. Eric had little doubt it would work, given the Shell Disrupt spells were effective against shells more powerful than the original caster. To what extent one could defeat the other, Eric had thus far not figured out.

The formula of battle diverged once more from common logic, the assumption that once bereft of defensive measures the 'defender' was lost definitely did not account for Diamond's secondary defensive or offensive skills. Eric could guess that the three sisters were already headed inward for their prey, with the express intent of poking him with the wooden training knives to end the battle. There was risk for their ploy, given the lack of visibility in the combat area, and Eric knew it. Apparently, so did Diamond; a mere handful of moments after his shell defense was bested, he emerged from the smoke field practically in front of Eric. He was smart enough to be silent about it, however, knowing what would happen given enough time.

The inevitable came next: "Ow! You stabbed my chest!" Kiona shouted.

"Got 'em!" Diana said before she presumably gave the length of the blade to her target.

"That was me, dolt!" Mikka replied with vehemence.

"Too much reliance on the eyes, not enough reliance on technique or strategy," Eric commented with a soured expression. "Nice counter to their operation, by the way," Eric replied offhand to his younger brother.

"And elsewhere in existence, such method-acting could be used for entertainment purposes," Diamond said.

"I know the Greek men have a predilection for playing with each other, would the same apply to ladies?" Eric asked in rhetorical, given that nobody present would have a straight answer. It also served as a much-intended barb against his sisters' conduct in this exercise.

To which, they all heard and all were furious about. "Do not compare us to the Greeks, brother, or we will have to take offense and recompense you in unexpected ways," Diane said.

Eric folded his arms across his chest, unimpressed with their threats. "I will stop comparing you to the Greeks whence you have overcome your obsession of stabbing everything as a solution to problems you face."

All three deflated when called on their preferred method. "Then what would you have us do, brother?" Kiona asked after a moment's silence.

"On a battlefield level, arrows or spells, especially lightning in this case. Diamond would be unable to see what you are doing, possibly unable to hear what you are casting, making him extremely vulnerable if you time it right. On a campaign level, I would recommend taking the scenario into consideration. If you are required to do battle for some reason, do so. If you do not have to do battle with him, when he hunkers down for defense, just apply the smoke cloud and bypass him. A battle never fought is a battle that does not chance killing you."

It would be a lesson that all four remembered, but a lesson that only one would take heed of.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 13 years 6 months after departure from Durgan)

"The nine of you learn fast; the slowest thereof is slightly faster than even I, and the Rune Maidens considered my learning speed to be almost an aberration," Eric admitted to his assembled family. "As all of you have rapidly mastered the basics of spellcraft, it is time to move on to more advanced subjects in the art."

"We have a good instructor," Diamond said offhand.

"Hear, hear!" Beryl seconded.

"The best instructor is unable to instill the lesson to someone who cannot or will not learn," Eric replied. "Learning requires participation of both."

"A point, big brother," Vala admitted. "Still, are these new books?"

"Yes, these are new books, though lacking in enough enchantments due to the way they were copied. You will need to retain your copies of the first books you trained under to help boost your available spell power," Eric said.

"Got it," Talpa replied to Eric's warning. Talpa crammed the older book into a backpack and slung it over shoulders, that he would have the original book available as something of a magic crutch. "How many other magic items may we have to boost our own power?"

"I have never found an upper limit," Eric replied. "By the same token, though, you can only carry so much with reasonable expectation of combat utility. Even a wizard must be capable of battlefield maneuver, brother, lest you be trapped by the flow of battle."

"Ah," Talpa deflated, having just seen his dreams of super-powering himself with add-on relics vanish in the mire of the battlefield.

"We shall begin today's lesson," Eric said after the rest of the family took note of Talpa's lesson. "The books you now prepare to learn from are different from your beginning read; these do not focus on one subject, they cover the basics and some moderate spells of every common classification and some of the specialist arts. The five disciplines of combat, Beryl?"

"Attack, Defense, Healing, Effect, and Chronological," Beryl enumerated quickly. Her preference was for combat skills, and she studied hard what skills she could.

"The four disciplines of civilian arts, Melane?"

"Common, Medical, Material, Chronological," she stated evenly. Her preference overlapped partially with the 'civilian' branch, though the same could be said of the combat branch due to her blossoming skills in healing wizardry.

"Any three of the specialist arts, Mikka?"

"Psionics, Geomancy, Druidic Calling?" Mikka figured the last one iffy, but she thought it counted in the superset of specialist skills.

"Close," Eric replied. "Psionics are not a discipline of wizardry, per se, despite being somewhat related in how they are used and how they are gauged. The others two are valid examples. Vala, three more."

"Clerical Calling, Illusions, and though I dread the subject, Necromancy," she admitted.

Eric grimaced; old-world biases were something he had to overcome during his training, and this was the first and normally the loudest of those bias he had to ensure was squelched here. "Okay, it is proper time for me to pass on to you a piece of understanding, given that this is the critical time in your training where your skills can be made or broke on such matters."

"Oh?" Diamond half-groused as everyone leaned in to hear the sage wisdom incoming.

"Much as we were trained in Durgan, I see in all of your conduct a bit of a bias. It is not necessarily a bad bias, per se, but it is a bias and any bias can be used against you in due time. Understand?"

"Yes sir, and no sir," Crystal replied.

"What bias are you talking about?" Melane followed up her twin's reply.

"The light and the dark, and in a greater sense the common understanding of good versus evil," Eric said. "We are agreed that Light wizardry is inherently good, correct?"

"Aye," Talpa admitted.

"And we are agreed that the darkness is often shown to be bad, correct?"

"Aye again," Talpa answered.

"Same applies to branches: healing wizardry is inherently good, necromancy or variants would be bad, no?"

"This is fairly writ," Diana said definitively, then furrowed her brow. "Wait a moment, you would not be stringing us along like this unless you intended on cutting us off at the hips," she put voice to her brethren's sudden sinking feeling. She also codified the common aspersion among the family that Eric never bothered with his student's knees, he always struck higher and harder.

"Likely higher," Kiona added to the expectation.

"I pose a question to you all: were I to use a _**Pearl Flare **_to set alight a village that had done no harm to the outside world, would this not be an intrinsically evil act despite the use of an inherently 'good' or 'holy' spell?"

"It would," Beryl admitted cautiously.

"In the mirror fain, were I to use _**Spirit Communication**_ to allow a lady to say her final goodbye to her deceased husband, would this not be a generally moral and beneficial action despite the use of what most would consider a nominally 'evil' classification of wizardry?"

Vala's jaw popped as she began to state a reply, an action that caused her to wince before she spoke. "Those would be subversions of the normal bent of those classes..." she hesitated when she saw Eric shaking his head slowly. "Would it not be? Or is it something else?"

"The first and greatest lesson of wizardry is that it is simply a form of power, nothing more, nothing less," Eric stated definitively. "You all have been trained just as I have, in the Durgan understanding of power and how to apply it." Eric held up his copy of the tome of spellcraft they were preparing to study. "In this book—nay, in my entire library of books, you will never find a spell that is inherently good or inherently evil, for no such thing exists anywhere in Existence. Every spell to be used shares alignment only with the fashion that it is used in. I have just opined how holy magic can be used for intractable evil, or how Necromancy can be used for benevolent purpose; you nine, who have much more vivid imagination, I rest assured you can consider even more inversions than I can dream."

"What is the lesson?" Beryl asked adroitly. "Be wary how you use the spells?"

"The overarching lesson is to bury the old-world bias, for it serves no purpose here, but it would be useful to be wary about how you use the spells just the same. We are here to solve problems, not create new ones." Eric decided to sink the final hook: "Sometimes, the solution to the problems you will face will be found only within disciplines that others would abhor. Once you are trained I have no say in how you conduct yourself, but I ask you all consider what value those outdated biases hold when it comes to solving the problems you will face."

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 14 years 0 months after departure from Durgan)

Beryl did not frequent the city she used to prostitute, mostly because it was no longer necessary now that she had greater purpose and greater sustenance courtesy of her wizardry. Exception was made for certain things that could not be manufactured on the farm, such as leather products or things that were easier made by professional hands, such as textiles. Even still, she had not traded in her humanity or her social relations for her spellbook, thus whenever she visited town she visited her former house of employment.

The bell on the door jingled when Beryl closed it, though a response was a few seconds in the coming. "Welcome to Madam Gina's—" the tea lady stammered when she saw who was at the door. "Beryl? Is that you?"

"It is," Beryl replied. "You look well, Ilsa," she said, surprised that the youngest member of Gina's brothel had not thus far found a way out as she wanted.

"You look so wildly different, Beryl," Ilsa said as she set the tea tray she carried on a table and moved to embrace the larger lady. "You almost appear like some form of nobility. How can you be so well if you do not prostitute yourself for finance?"

"The guy that struck down Gina's pimp," Beryl replied. Said pimp was also technically Beryl's pimp just the same, as well as the pimp for Gina's subordinates, but such details were already understood by the just-barely-teenaged tea wench.

"You are now married to him? Was he royalty or something?" Ilsa asked plaintively.

"Certainly not!" Beryl replied in an almost disgusted fashion. "That was my eldest brother, Ilsa. He is an exceptionally powerful wizard, commissioned by the Fates and trained by an offshoot of the Valkyrie."

"Are you sure you're not, erm, well..." she trailed off with the dim look from Beryl.

"That is rather disgusting, Ilsa," Beryl grumped. "But that is life, when you get down to it. Do what you must to get by. No, I am not sleeping with my brother or brothers, but I am learning spellcraft from him."

"Ilsa, where is that tea? The guests grow impatient!" The speaker was a new face to Beryl, but give how she was dressed there was little doubt she was a harlot just as Beryl had been.

"Tanya, please tell Madam Gina that she has a guest here," Ilsa nonetheless moved quickly to the tea tray and began the trek upstairs to the tea room in question. "I want to hear more about your adventures, Beryl. I'll be back – maybe," she hedged on the last part.

"The oldest trade, and yet another young practitioner," Beryl groused, reminding herself that Ilsa was maybe 14 at the oldest and likely younger. Said lady did not know her own age properly, due mostly to having been abandoned when young. Doubtless some clients would pay extra for the younger lady's services, since the same had happened to Beryl in years past.

Beryl's wait for Gina was not overlong. "Well well, look at this," said Madam commented from the top of the stairs. "Tall, dark, and incredibly fit. I would daresay that shows you are doing well?"

The madam and the former prostitute embrace warmly, having not spoken in over a year. "For certain definitions of 'well', I would say," Beryl replied evenly. "I no longer prostitute for finance; the man who slayed our pimp is my eldest brother, and he trains us to be wizards in a model similar to the Valkyrie. The downside is, he was Durgan just as my father was, and his physical standards are even more demanding. I was never this fit as a prostitute, and that says something. On the other hand, I do spend a lot of time outside; combat spellcraft is best not used indoors."

The door opened, and someone Beryl never expected to see within had stepped in. "Welcome to my brothel, sir," Gina said with a small bow; the low-cut dress she wore was intended to 'get their attention' with such actions. "Might I help you?"

Surprisingly, it worked on the least-perverse of the three guys in the family. "Well, maybe," he said.

"Talpa, knock it off," Beryl cautioned. "You are not contributing to the woes of a prostitute in my presence, clear?"

"Yes, milady," he replied immediately and somewhat facetiously. "You through shopping already?"

"Finding the needed materials was not difficult," Beryl admitted. "You have the spearheads?"

"And metal for proper sword blades," Talpa said. "Diamond and the trio will be busy."

Clapping from the top of the staircase drew everyone's attention to the landing. "Bravo, Gina, this is an impressive addition to your staff," a well-dressed man said. "Were I not married, I would take her to bed myself."

Beryl smiled serenely. "My apologies for disappointing, good sir, but I am a former prostitute and nevermore to practice that trade." He stopped midway down the staircase, scowling something fierce at the turn. "My brother is the soldier who slew our former pimp, and with that casualty I have changed professions."

"Oh?" He resumed the march down the stairs. "And your new profession is?"

"Combat spellcraft," Beryl replied simply.

This engendered another round of clapping from the man. "Oh, do tell, could you turn me into a frog? I have always wanted to know what life looks like from those eyes."

Beryl smiled again, this time a little more than evil. "I could turn you into a frog, but it is a lot simpler to just outright kill you. Shall I demonstrate?"

"Certainly!" he half-shouted. "And, if you fail to kill me, I would like your services for a night before your return to being a prostitute."

"Beryl," Talpa half-cautioned.

The eldest female Atrebas ignored the warning. "Gina, stand aside, please." Once she was aside, Beryl began by raising her hand in a certain arrangement of fingers necessary to control the spell's effect. "_**The native winds of the Sylvan lands controlled, the arc of air shall descend in a Gale Blade.**_"

Four blurred pulses of air descended on the targeted man, still three steps up the stairs. The air blades sheared through his clothing, body, and even through the stairs upon which he stood with savagery unparalleled. His body was rent into pieces, the largest chunk being his right thigh; the blood of his being was immediately redistributed around the room, even coating Beryl and Talpa who knew such was going to result. The damage to the heavy staircase was just as impressive, with five steps sundered and the main runners themselves damaged to the point of instability. What leftover energy remained from the attack was expended on the boards below the stairs but did not penetrate into the basement.

"Oh, oh, by the Gods, you weren't joking!" Gina gibbered, half-terrified, half-elated in seeing said man shredded.

"Well, we just adroitly highlighted the fact that we killed someone," Talpa admitted, looking over his heavily stained clothes. "Nice shot, sister, regardless," he grudgingly admitted.

"Amazing! You really _can_ kill evil, you just need to have insane skills to do it," Gina admitted.

"Who was he, anyways?" Beryl asked.

"My landlord," Gina admitted. "And the person who this property defaults to is a true evil spirit." She looked up the stairs. "Ilsa!"

"Ma'am?" Ilsa asked, from the banister on the second floor, wondering why the downstairs was now spattered red.

"Sir Gernes is dead. Have the girls pack everything valuable and their personal goods, we are leaving immediately."

"You are not setting up another brothel," Beryl declared. "Talpa, we help them emigrate from this town, out to our place."

"Interesting," Talpa replied blandly.

"If one prostitute can make it as a witch, so can the rest of us, I take it?" Gina asked.

"I have faith in you, sister," Beryl replied evenly. Related they were not, but both grew up in the same trade and town. They considered themselves sisters even despite separate parents.

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 14 years 6 months after departure from Durgan)

"Okay, is this in following with a decent concept?" and Eric was handed a list scrawled on a scrap of paper.

"This is acceptable," Eric replied evenly to Diamond's somewhat heated question. "Now, why the rage?"

"What was I doing wrong?" Diamond asked in clear shock.

"Diamond, I know your preference for having multi-purpose devices at hand, and I agree with it in principle, but you were crossing diametrically-opposed purposes in one plan. While this is technically possible for the most part, it is logically unsound. Follow?"

"No, sir, I do not," Diamond replied, though without heat or rage in voice.

"Think about it, Diamond. Your staff of healing had a defensive mechanism in it—no major problem there, a shell spell is a good thing to have for even a dedicated healer. However, having a poisoning spell on a primarily healing device is a recipe for eventual tragedy."

"How can that not be useful?" Diamond asked in retort. "I think it could be theoretically critical for a Defense Mage to be able to defend themselves."

"Oh yes, I support that. The problem is, you do not want an ambiguous relic in use, or someone will eventually misuse it whether inadvertent or not. Attack and defense is good; defense and healing is likewise good; attack and healing is dangerous." Eric could tell Diamond wasn't convinced. "Okay, if it can be done, do it, but make sure you know exactly what you are getting into before you do it. And for the Gods' sakes, don't poison yourself with your own healing rod."

"Understood, sir. Recommendations on preventing that?"

"Make the poison activation a spoken phrase and the process for activating the healing skills a rune pattern or intrinsic," Eric suggested.

"I am sorry, brother, but this is a case where I must agree to disagree with you on purposing relics."

"Somebody has to," Eric replied. "If you will begin, plan on doing it in the middle hours of the day, when I can handle the training for the new recruits."

"Aye, brother," Diamond replied.

"Please send the trio up here whence you next encounter them. They will be needed."

"They will be on the way shortly."

When Diamond had left the room, Eric picked up his Library Relic and sighed. He wasn't really sure if what he was about to do was technically proper, but in the end he was running out of options. How he managed to do so Eric never quite figured out, yet Diamond had acquired a very low-level relic enchantment tome and had thus far come up with a good dual-purpose dagger and a questionable triple-purpose staff. Despite the general lack of scaled power behind the relic's enchantments, that they were actually preparing such enchanted devices was enough to force Eric's hand in the matter. Besides, as Talpa had hinted at in prior months, the more relics the better.

"Library, release column 1 books," Eric ordered as he held the library plate over the large empty space in his room. From the illusionary cloud of books around the relic, books began falling out onto the floor in somewhat-neat stacks until he had nearly a thousand tomes stacked waist high and wider than a man's height.

"All of them?" Beryl asked from the shadows of the corner near the door in his room. Eric had grown accustomed to such questions and interloping, as Beryl was easily the sneakiest of his relatives she could go pretty much anywhere she wanted without being observed.

"All of them," Eric replied evenly. "I was trained that flexibility is key; I gander that coming assignments and threats will be progressively greater deviance from what we think as normal."

"I have no more gauge on what is 'normal', strictly speaking," Beryl replied. "My days are bloodless drills, my nights are mental exercises and the spellbook. Were I normal, I would still be a courtesan or maybe even permanently married and running a house." She seized up, then looked away. "Never normal, never again, and never to venture there."

Eric recognized the hesitation for what it was. "What ailed you just now?"

"I remembered how we met," she admitted after a short pause. "And I remembered how you looked me over rather thoroughly, though I could not tell what you were thinking."

Eric nodded twice, almost imperceptibly; he remembered just the same, as well as the instant dread he had felt at the time he realized what he had thought. "You likely do not want to know."

Beryl snorted. "And if I did, would you tell?" she asked automatically, given that Eric concealed more than a few things behind such a statement – sometimes useful, sometimes inane, sometimes very disturbing.

"I would, if asked," Eric admitted. "I'll even front that my initial reaction is still valid, though definitely not applicable on the fact that you are family and I do not play that way."

"You may not, but someone else definitely has those thoughts," Beryl admitted quietly.

Eric knew exactly who she was referring to. It wasn't always visible, and was never stated, but Eric could recognize the signs that one of his younger sisters was paying an unhealthy amount of attention to him. "I am trying not to think about her conduct in that fashion," Eric admitted after a few seconds' silence. "More to the point, I am trying to not think about you in that fashion; not only is the family angle wrong, but an instructor should not be involved with the students."

"Which is worse?" she asked archly, thinking Eric had his priorities incorrect.

Eric hesitated for a moment. "Both are bad, but the family issue can be solved in one way or another. A lapse in instruction can get the student killed," he said at his coldest. "Mind, I repeat myself: I want no part of either scenario."

Beryl sighed. "Sad but true," she admitted. "You can stop spying and come in now, sisters," she ordered of the door.

"Disgusting but right," Diana said as she pushed through the slightly cracked door. "If I had to choose, I'd take the former. Disgusting, but at least I'd survive with proper training."

"None of that active in this family, though," Mikka said.

"Keep it that way," Eric ordered. "Each of you take two of these Library Plates," and Eric handed each a pair of the 4" by 6" metal plates with engraved runes. "These are the Libraries, and we will fill them. Now, since these books are already within a boat's length of the plates they have nonmagical copies of these books already, but since these are magic tomes they all have some amount of useful power and we need that copied."

"How?" Kiona asked plaintively.

"We touch the Library plates to the book in question," and Eric demonstrated. "This will copy the full magic form of the book instead of just the physical form."

"For all these?" Diana asked, incredulous, pointing to the stack of books.

"Oh yes, this and six more columns," Eric said. "Many subjects, many variants, many books, and each Library will have all the books included in mine. Questions?"

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 15 years 0 months after departure from Durgan)

Eric knew there were eyes on his flank, but he kept himself focused forward and not on the one that seemed to have a rather unhealthy infatuation with him.

"Okay, this is where I don't understand the invoked symbols," Crystal said as she pointed out the passage in her tome. "Is this what should be drawn in the Runes to invoke this spell?" She was pointing to a passage and an inset symbol in the book she was working out of.

"This should be the rune here," Eric replied while pointing to a separate rune, then caught himself. "No, you are correct, the rune you indicate is the rune needed. However, since you have already done the second, you can practice this spell for one shot."

"That...well," Crystal looked past Eric to the other person in the training group. "Vala?"

"I shall, if big brother would permit it?" said apprentice asked.

"Please do," Eric said, happy to get her mind off him and onto a task.

"Is it as creepy as I think it would be?" Crystal asked quietly as Vala began.

"Coming from you?" Eric asked in counter.

"Aye," Melane replied for the pair of them. "We ask on the level."

Eric sighed. "It is creepy beyond all compare, even after clear knowledge and confirmation of interrelation," Eric replied. "This is, of course, under the assumption that you are correct, an assumption I am not willing to make." He had found a spell in one of his civilian wizardry tome, a spell that would trace a group's bloodheritage and any persons that were related in that group would be highlighted by an aura of varied colors for their mutual parentage. The way the spell worked was immensely complex, but it had shown a straightforward result for the ten of the family being related by father. Eric had little doubt, but Beryl wanted to see the spell in action to verify with finality.

"_**Green leaves dance, spirits of Nature energize unto one of your creation, restore the form intended with Sylvan Regeneration**_," Vala ran the chant to complete the invocation. The result was viscereal in the least, as growing and glowing green leaves danced inside a column circumscribed by the rune Crystal set up. The damaged tree in the center of the rune began growing new branches from the destroyed stumps at an extreme rate; in minutes, the branches sheared off by a recent nordic windstorm were now full-sized branches that Eric could not tell was ever damaged to begin with.

"That was above decent," Crystal commented dryly. She didn't like being outdone in her specialty, and this was one case where it just happened.

"That was above expectations," Eric replied as Vala stood and approached. "Did you do something different?" Their Instructor asked calmly as she approached, fury in demeanor.

"I, sir, no, sir," she replied coldly. "Melane, Crystal, it may appear my attention untoward, but my intentions are not. You pair, whose disposition pertaining to each other is well known, you have no place to question me on such," she said directly and with enough venom in voice to constitute a grave insult. "Brother, I know clearly we are related. I thank you for at least the shadow of a doubt you gave me."

As Vala headed through the forest toward home, Eric looked back to the twins. "That rather directly settled that," he commented.

"She can be a real bitch sometimes," Melane commented crassly.

_You earned it, sister_, Eric thought but did not say. Appearances had been maintained in this concern, to the point that Eric was even beginning to doubt Vala's intentions being on the level, but he knew intrinsically the twins were just as bad in that respect. That conduct may have made it easier for them to see the conduct in progress, or at least see the illusion of such conduct on Vala's part. As far as Eric was concerned if the youngest single daughter in the family said she wasn't playing that way, Eric would accept it at face value until he had cause not to (if ever).

"Be that as it may, it is time for you to prepare the necessary rune to cast the Sylvan Healing Rune spell, and just for fun I think you will also duplicate Vala's example Sylvan Regeneration spell just the same," Eric ordered.

"Aye, sir," Melane barely ground out through clenched teeth.

Eric watched on as one prepared the rune for the Sylvan Regeneration and the other prepared the Sylvan Healing. It was not uncommon for Eric to use extended lessons as something akin to punishment, especially for foolhardy judgments or assumptions. Eric also made it particularly clear that he was not under any form of extended obligation to retain them for training, and if they did not want to listen he was not going to train insubordinates. Arguments were few and far between, though Eric knew this one had been brewing for over a year. That it finally came to a head without any overt violence on the matter was something of a relief to Eric, though he would not show it in front of these two.

"Readied, sir," Crystal said with a ration of defiance to voice.

Eric paid it no heed. "Begin your spell," the ex-Durgan ordered of his sister and disciple.

"_**Green leaves dance, spirits of Nature energize unto one of your creation, restore the injuries of this being with Sylvan Healing,**_" Crystal canted the spell properly, which restored the applied sword-slash to the test tree within seconds.

"That is impressive healing speed and completeness," Eric said as he traced the cut scar with his thumb. Only a slight discoloration was visible when compared to the bark of the remainder of the tree, the only evidence that the tree had been damaged to begin with.

"Are you really as cavalier as you seem about this matter?" Crystal asked after a moment's silence.

"I am," Eric replied. "First, I believe she was not lying. Second, I would not participate, at least not willingly. Third, whence training is complete, we will all likely be going our separate ways – exceptions being made for the two logical groups among us, of course. Fourth, she is right about one thing: we are all our own beings, when everything is said and done. What we choose to do, we do on our own accord. Thus, we are free in a fashion Durgan may never understand."

-x-x-x-

(Time elapse: 15 years 6 months after departure from Durgan)

"Greek Hoplites? Here?" Eric asked rhetorically, observing the incoming infantry. "They are way too far north for this to be a random campaign."

"What do we do about them, brother?" Beryl asked after a moment's hesitation.

"Their shield marking...Spartans?" Vala asked.

"Yes, Spartans. Greek hardasses like no other," Talpa said dryly.

"Crystal, Melane, left flank, wide, make it about 200 yards distant. Do you think you can use spells in these sparse trees?" Eric asked.

"Can do," Crystal said. "Do we drive them north?"

"No, you wait for us to drive them south and west, then you strike their exposed flank, hard," Eric ordered. "When we have done this unit in, return and we will devise a new plan. Trio, I want you to the right flank; drive them hard into Crystal and Melane, as the remainder of us drive them westward. Questions?"

"No, sir," they all replied earnestly.

"This is the real deal, people; us or them. I don't need to tell you how I want it to end, correct?" Eric said evenly. Nine pairs of eyes answered silently; all were expecting a tough battle, and a few were not expecting to survive, but none would fail to take as many to Hades with them as possible.

"_**Teleport**_," five chanted in series, moving toward their ambush locations in such a way they would be unseen by the Greek soldiers marching in column.

Eric waited on the far side of a pine tree, concealed from sight but not from sound. The explosion of a _**Fireball**_ spell would certainly convert part of their formation into scattered body parts, a move Eric calculated was one of the best opening attacks possible – and decidedly Mikka's action, not of her sisters. The strike continued with what Eric assumed would be an _**Ice Shard**_ spell, a nasty spell for impaling enemies and leaving little to no trace of how it was done. The third strike was a thunder spell of some kind, due mostly to the ear-splitting strike sound that accompanied the bright flash of light.

Talpa broke cover next, though once he did he did not move. "Eric, looks like the girls got 'em all. Lot less than we thought there would be," he said. It was not overlong before the five flank strikers returned to Eric by way of teleport again.

"Damn good spellcraft," Eric replied. "I didn't want to tell you this prior, but this is not the first rank of Greek soldiers I have slain in the past weeks," he admitted. "They are searching for us; I beat that information out of a low-rank Priest of Zeus accompanying a file of Phalanx like this one."

"What do we do?" Vala asked.

"Run north to the lands of the Norse, finish our training, and split from there?" Vala asked after a moment's silence among the ten Atrebas family.

"That will be our best bet for now," Eric replied evenly. "Even if we must swim from near shore to their lands, we will get clear."

"We need to head home, pack up our most important stuff and get moving, then," Beryl said. "The other recruits?" she was referring to the myriad prostitutes and the odd orphan Eric had picked up to train in.

"They will accompany," Eric answered immediately. "Teleport home, to the log, ten second intervals," Eric ordered; it was a standard practice drill, whereby each member of the family would teleport home in series with a time gap so they did not conflict with each other when they arrived. "I will lead off. _**Teleport**_," Eric activated his pre-chanted (stored) Teleport for the day; he used a pre-chanted spell only once a day, if he had to reuse it he would full-length chant it for practice purpose.

As soon as he touched foot to the stump of a deceased oak tree, he knew something was wrong in the house. It was now larger than ever before, expanded by wizardry and manual labor to make room for the myriad influx of recruits and to expand the common spaces, but even in expansion there was always someone outside doing something. Not today, not now, nothing was stirring. Eric hopped off the log quickly and drew his enchanted katana, ready for the battle he could sense was coming.

Eric moved to the door of the house and drove his shoulder into it, then as he took the first step inside the threshold his sword came up to the ready to slash. He raised his blade to begin the stroke, but he stopped; something about her being and her presence caught Eric's sense of familiarity, as if he knew this lady well.

The lady he almost bisected simply turned around, an action enough to seize Eric cold. He said nothing, simply staring at her in shock until Beryl entered behind him. "Who are you?" the eldest of Eric's sisters asked, her own blade drawn and readied.

"Has Eric not told you about I?" she asked in formal and literate Greek, the native language of the Durgan to which all the Atrebas children had been trained.

"Verthandi? Why are you here?" Eric asked finally, over the shock of her sudden (and unannounced) arrival.

"Circumstances have changed, Eric. I will explain when the others arrive."

"And the other recruits?" Beryl asked. Diamond entered behind Eric and shifted left, ready to cover their left flank if things grew hot.

"I have moved them to a training cadre the Rune Maidens operate in consort with the Hindu divinities. They are well out of the reach of the Greek phalanx roaming these lands." Crystal entered and moved to her usual seat, what was a fruit crate in years past and now served the purpose of a chair. "Before you ask, Eric, she has acquitted herself well against the Athenian Hoplite ranks, both in spell and close quarters."

"This is good," Eric said as Melane arrived and entered the building.

Talpa, Vala, and the triplets entered in order, each with the same question as Beryl, and each with as many individual questions as Eric could guess possible. When Kiona took her seat, Eric began the discussion. "The lady before you is Verthandi, the Fate of Today and adjunct to the Norse Gods. To you, milady," Eric said the last as he bowed and took a seat.

"Listen well, for your lives depend on it. The Greeks have been told false information about what we have taught Eric, and what he has taught you. They now hunt you incessantly, believing you intend to annihilate their order."

Everyone in the room had some choice words to say on that. Talpa's comment was particularly endemic of the group's stance: "Who slandered us in such fashion? I will personally gut their carcasses and string the entrails out for vultures to feast upon!"

"Hold, Talpa, all of you," Eric ordered curtly. "What that this was simply Greek infantry, we could continually annihilate their formations one by one. We are combat wizards, after all, but our foe has Divine Clerics on their side as well. We are evenly matched for the most part, though our superior combat tactics give us the edge. Still, eventually the Gods will come into play, and they are not foes a mere mortal can challenge."

"This is, sadly, correct," Verthandi replied. "The actions of the Greeks are illogical and against our request. The Norse have severed ties and stand ready for battle, should they venture too far north. Though it puts us in direct challenge to the Greek Gods, we Fates have decided that you must be extracted and protected."

Someone to Eric's right gasped hard at such a revelation.

"To protect you, we must divide your numbers. Eric has taught you the bulk of what you must know. Your imagination, skillset and compassion will make up the difference in training that you lack from Eric's standard. The rest is in the hands of the future you will build for yourselves." Verthandi could not disguise the sadness in her voice: "What that I could avoid subjecting you to this, for it will be tough for you all, but this must be done. The future must be written, or we will never see the proper end."

"We have trained for this," Diamond said as he stood. "We go where you order, Your Majesty," he said, not entirely sure how to address a demi-Goddess.

"We do what must be done," Vala said in counter to her trepidation. "We stand at the ready."

"You will need these," and Verthandi held up a handful of rings, each inscribed with Norse runes. "They are special rings that will aid you in your new lands. When you wear them, no other person will be able to see or sense them until you take them off. They will translate spoken languages, protect you from poisons, and increases your spellcraft power."

Each of the Atrebas received a ring that fit them perfectly. "Verify Libraries," Eric ordered of his family. Each of his relatives pulled and showed their Library relics, to which Eric showed his original library to them. "I am sorry I wasn't able to finish your training. Take what I have taught you, and build on it in your own way. Bury your fears and use your strengths as you need. Someday, we may meet again."

"You will meet again, in the end. For now, you will build your future in new lands and in new methods. Heed your elder brother's words: bury your fears, but more than use your strengths, let your strengths become one with the lands you will inhabit. This is the path to your duty, and the path to your future." The trio were the first to disappear in a small glimmer of green light. Vala went next in a white flash, followed by Talpa in a black halo, and the twins went together in a green flash. Diamond went in a blue-green glimmer, Beryl disappeared in a violet halo.

Eric did not depart immediately, to which he raised an eyebrow in query to Verthandi. "Yes, I wanted to speak to you alone," she answered his unstated question. "None of your family will have an easy go of it in their new lands, but you will undoubtedly have the worst of it. Where I send you, you will understand true hatred and malice as few others shall ever see in Existence. Take these lessons to heart, and you may one day build the method by which we can challenge Ragnarok."

"And I shall let my strengths become one with the lands, and in that my purpose shall be writ," Eric said, to which Verthandi nodded. "What are my true strengths? Certainly it is not my blade or spell, those are commonplace in Existence."

"Yes and no," Verthandi hedged. "I cannot say what your true strength is, for it cannot be defined even by the Gods. You will understand soon enough, even if you cannot put it to words."

"I will do what I can. Summon if I am needed elsewhere, milady." Eric's eyes locked briefly with Verthandi's and for a moment he saw her unexpressed emotions. Without a further word, Eric disappeared in a cobalt blue radial shell, a construct of his rare power over Force Spellcraft, as she directly relocated him in both time and space to another dimension, another world, and another time frame.

Verthandi looked around the silent and now unoccupied house, almost despaired of the course she had to take. "I can only hope they someday forgive me this terrible transgression against them all."

-x-

Diana was the first of the triplets to stir from unconsciousness. She did have an interesting time telling anything about their area, especially since it was night-time where they landed. The open field they were in smelled of cows, but other than one cow in the area, nothing was visible in the area.

Mikka and Kiona were awake shortly thereafter, and the trio set out to find some semblance of civilization. They agreed on a cover story for now, they were displaced ladies and specifically not prostitutes; they would work out how they were displaced once they had a feel for the environs.

They did find a village within an hour, but the dead bodies and torched buildings bespoke less-than-friendly environs.

-x-

"Is she alive?" a voice asked.

"She is alive, and even unharmed," a second voice answered.

"She is...human, right?" the first voice asked.

"She is like no human we have ever known," the second replied calmly. "She is not from this world; it would be grossly dishonorable for us to do harm to her without knowing why she is here."

"A council has been called for," a third voice said. "When she is awake and lucid, the human will tell us of how she came into possession of our arts."

"They are not simply our arts," the second declared, cold of voice. "Magic exists everywhere; to believe that we Elves are the only allowed to use it is arrogant beyond all compare."

Vala thought it was a dream, but she wasn't quite sure...

-x-

Talpa remained awake during the transfer, which was veritably a good thing due to where he landed. The center of a ceremonial fire pit would prove to be a rather inhospitable destination for someone crossing dimensions.

"Oh, good Gods," Talpa groaned as he realized where he was about to land, though when he landed on the logs he did not sense any heat. "What...is this?" he looked around himself at the flames clearly surrounding himself for yards in every direction, but nothing was burning on him – or burning him.

"Who is this interloper?" a voice beyond the flames asked. "Why are you here? Why do you interfere with our ritual?"

Before Talpa could even open his mouth to answer, he noticed something in the flames around him; as the seconds passed, a wall of black-white flames radiated out from him in counter to the blue-white flames; in a matter of seconds, the original flames were consumed by those apparently generated by Talpa's presence.

"Master Badamon! Those flames – the flames are black! Is he – can he be?"

"He is, the flames do not lie," the first voice commented. "He causes the flames to become darkness itself; a warrior that can balance the darkness against the light."

Talpa stepped toward the voice he was hearing, and came to the rail of the fire pit. From inside the flames, he teleported outside the pit to where the high priest in charge of the ceremony was conducting the ritual, with about a hundred apprentices aiding in the ritual. His ability to teleport caused instant consternation in all those who saw it, but a slight smile in the high priest.

"Welcome, young warrior, to a new land," the high priest said with a very deferential bow.

-x-

"Sister, you all right? Crystal?" Melane asked.

"I'm alive, does that count?" Crystal asked blearily.

"Better than I thought," Melane replied with a clear hint of relief to voice.

"How bad?" Crystal asked.

"As far as I can tell, the locals seem to want us for human sacrifices," Melane said with a hint of humor. "What do you think?"

"I think we may have to convince them otherwise," Crystal opined quietly. "A little thunder and lightning, scare tactics? Maybe a little persuasion on how a mage does it?"

"I think so," Melane agreed. The two sisters, bound in rope and vine, enjoyed their ride into town on a litter; it would be a memorable sacrifice in the days to come, but not for the reason the victorious hunters thought it would be.

-x-

Diamond had heard it all in the time it took them to haul him from the bowels of the ship up to the deck. The only thing stopping him from asking for clarification on some of the terms was his wild imagination, which went a long way to fill in the gaps as appropriate.

"Should we see to this lad, mates?" the apparent captain of the ship asked.

"AYE!" The crew chanted. "Keelhaul his land-loving ass!" one crew member nearby him said.

"SHIP SIGHTED!" The lookout at the top of the ship's mast shouted to the deck. "Looks like a warship, Cap'n! Port side, past the main rigging!"

"Where the bloody hell did it come from?" the Captain asked. "Spanish fla—" he choked when the ship disappeared behind a wall of smoke; Diamond could watch the projectiles sent their way in the air, since they were not particularly fast and very large. "DAMN THOSE SPANIARDS! I HAVE A LETTER OF MARQUE FROM THEM!"

Diamond figured the ship was only about a mile off, easily in range to his fireball spell with proper augmentation. "Captain, I can deal with that ship, if needed," Diamond said calmly, projecting more composure than he actually felt.

"Silence when talking to—" his captor said, hauling a saber closer to Diamond's throat.

"Wait, seaman," the Captain said. "This is the device of an unholy wizard, and we are all damned men regardless," the Captain began.

"We have not invoked Satan, we need not his deviltry to defeat the Spanish or die with honor!"

"SILENCE!" the Captain shouted, even over the echo of another group of shots coming toward the ship. "Knave, is this the work of a Devil you plan?"

"I train to kill Devils, I would not invoke them in my arts," Diamond replied fairly, still showing a preternatural amount of calm.

"Scare off the ship, and show me it is not the work of a Devil, and you will survive for a day. Take the ship, and you may join my crew," the Captain said over his crew's protests. "And if he is not coming falsehood before God, and you rail against him, I will help him personally keelhaul the lot of you!" the Captain said.

"I require my Library plate, Captain," Diamond said. He was returned the plate, and shown to the banister nearest the ship. Without prompting, Diamond pointed to the ship and began: "_**A furious cloud of sulfur releases its energy in a massive Fireball**_!"

Five seconds later, the silence on the deck of the ship was broken: "Holy Jesus, Son of God, please forgive my trespass against this agent of your Divine Power," the Ship's second-in-command said as the two halves of the Spanish warship began sinking rapidly.

-x-

Beryl stood in the doorway of the house she had appeared in. The residents within had fled on her appearance, leaving Beryl with many questions and a marked lack of answers.

One answer came to her just as quickly as she could orient herself.

"Foul witch! Surrender yourself, and leave this world in peace!" The horseman in heavy armor in their group ordered of her.

Beryl knew a predator whenever she saw one, and the right-hand man to the lead soldier was one of the best. Her time as a prostitute acquainted her with every type of man imaginable, and she knew how to gauge them with a mere look.

The apple she was eating was dropped aside and she squared herself to their rank. Ten stood against her, eight basic infantry with pikes, the predator in white, and the one in armor. "I wonder how many ladies you have told the same, and how many could not defend you as a proper witch would."

"Is this how you wish it to end?" the leader asked.

"I have an apple to finish," she said before she drew her Gladius. "Best we get on with it."

-x-

Eric awoke, looking across the rock ground into the lifeless eyes of a transient. He did not move immediately, he only nodded in affirmation that Verthandi was not joking if he came of consciousness starting into dead eyes.

When he came to his knees, he realized he was in between two very tall and also somewhat stone buildings, with glass windows one would expect of a high-society building. A quick glance at the deceased showed that Eric was dressed wildly differently from the norm in these lands; he was quick to remove the coat and cloak from the deceased and add it to his dress; such an action immediately made him difficult to recognize, as far as being a wildly different foreigner compared to the average in town.

With that done, Eric moved to the end of the alley in which he arrived; at the end, he slumped down against the wall of the building and began observing – and listening, for what he could decipher over the constant din of noises.

The marked amount of ladies on the move in the city made fair mention of the denizens of this town; Eric had never seen so much bared skin in his life, even when traversing the prostitution districts of major towns during his travels. Just the same, every lady was dressed in such a fashion, which seemed as much a function of climate as it did custom. A few guys were out and about, though Eric could tell they were making themselves scarce in response to something coming down the street.

The buildings were all manufactured of brick or some form of moldable stone, at least every building Eric could see from his position. All had glass panes in the windows, some had segmented glass panes and some even had glass doors that appeared to move of their own volition. Eric discounted the possibility of magic in that artifice immediately; a quickly-mumbled _**Detect Magic**_ spell showed nothing in the area except his personal effects and himself. More to the point, the large metal devices that appeared to replace horse and beast of burden appeared to make mechanical and metal sounds when activated and used; appropriate sign of artifice and science, not of alchemy or magic.

Slowly, the activity in the area began to stop, and the people began to turn toward the road. Eric watched as they all began to raise their right arm and point it slightly above the horizon, straight as an arrow. Eric figured it some form of traditional salute to a ruling party, though he also figured himself of low enough station and disrepute that he would not be seen and challenged for not following. He could hear the march of soldiers in parade, the perfectly-aligned steps multiplied the sound by at least a hundred men, likely more. In short order they came into view, a hundred men as he assumed, though led by one of the horseless movement machines with one of their rank standing in the back of it. Eric did not miss the symbolism, they were trying to instill pride and fear in the commoners of this district, but all they were doing was pissing those people off.

Eric watched with an ashen face, making impression of being dead or close to it, and not one of the soldiers involved in the parade took note of him sitting in the shadows and watching. A hundred men stomped by, stepping absurdly high to make a fearful racket, with red flags held skyward. Eric could just barely discern the symbol in the crosswind, a white circle with some form of spidering four-legged device in the center. An organization definitely in power, but definitely reviled by the common mass.

One look at a lady in the main walkway adjacent to the paved road was answer enough as to how much they were despised. _Verthandi was not joking_, Eric admitted to himself silently. _This is a land that knows how to hate_.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

If you will excuse what is a semblance of abruptness in this chapter, the pacing and echo of events requires the speed shown. Eric was with his brothers and sisters for only a couple of years, but even this was enough to set in motion the second-order ripple effect of the coming story arcs.

The matter at hand is one of scale. Alone, any of the Atrebas family is effectively no more potent than a grain of sand when wagered against the planet it resides on. Thus, the concept that the Rune Maidens work with is writ: an empirical reaction is one that grows larger and larger with each passing generation of the reaction, and in this Eric has achieved a victory of no small order. The problem remains that the reaction is far from over; the ten of the Atrebas family are now divided, and each now stands in a position to continue the reaction in their own fashion.

Now, the crux of the present problem: where are they, and what are they to do about their environs? As is shown, only one of the family is in an environ that can be considered friendly, and that only for certain definitions of the word 'friendly' in said case. Crystal and Melane are in an area that is hostile, Beryl is confronted with battle right from the get-go, and though Diamond has made believers out of the ship's crew, he will shortly find that their rank is less than respected. The Terrible Trio are in a less-than-friendly land but this far have gotten off as unknowns. Vala stands in limbo (and her fate stands on her ability to persuade her captors that she isn't against them). Technically, Eric stands in similar limbo to the Trio, though if you can read symbology you can guess that the lands Eric now resides in is far from friendly to an immigrant wizard. Or it might be, depending on how you look at it.

My beta put one good question to me and one good opinion piece. I will deal with his implicit question, and his opinion piece below. Above, some of you may have noticed a little abruptness on the part of Vala and the twins, given their conduct vis-a-vis each other and toward Eric. Again, this is a bit of factor to the semblance of abruptness, it is part the work of the dice, and part ongoing concept of the Atrebas family. I began the concept of the Multimage Chronicles about fifteen years ago (as of 2010), at least in the core tents, and have expanded on it significantly since then. The family was actually initially larger and a lot more conflicted than is shown here, but through distillation I pared it down and brought it more in line with an overall concept that is now the MMC. However, not all the conflict and strange conduct intended is gone; Vala and the Twins are one of the outstanding perpetual family feuds that will remain in force for a long time; expect this to echo long and hard to come. Vala toward Eric is one that was initially intended as 'may be, may not be', and herein the dice speak: not happening. This, of course, does not spare the illusion of such intentions, and the Twins using it to belittle the little sister. It will come back to haunt everyone involved.

_**Necroblade**_ also posited a theory pertaining to a thread Talpa started. Eric said that he found no upper limit to how much a Mage can draw upon other Mages or Relics to create spells or power up lower level spells, but a practical limitation existed as to how much one could carry. Necroblade pointed out that movement in such a case could be rendered a moot point if a Mage could be made powerful enough as to finish a battle in one or two spells, and use lesser troops for mop-up detail if needed. Maybe throw in a guard or two for close-prox defense against a Leeroy rush or something of that nature. Well, the author would like to point out that this theory is a known theory and is considered entirely valid under my systems, though in practice there are limitations – grave limitations – to min-maxing in that fashion. Such limitations will be both shown and exploited, of this I guarantee. And, I should inform you all to keep in mind that the MMC is a story about infinite possibility; wizardry is far from the be-all-end-all in Existence and you are advised to keep in mind that an enemy may simply look for an asymmetrical solution to a wizard that tanks out in such a fashion.

Trust me on this if nothing else, where the story shall go, what methods of warfare are yet to be shown, there will be PLENTY of asymmetrical solution to wizardry, just as you can expect wizardry to be used as an asymmetrical solution to those forms of warfare. This is deliberate on my part; infinite possibility will eventually lead to someone saying: "Hey, what if we did this..." in reference to wizardry or an alternate appropriate discipline.

That is it for this chapter. I leave the remainder to your imaginations for now, while I work on the next chapter of Archangel's Amazing Adventures.

NEXT UP: Eric finds out what manner of world he has landed upon, in all its splendors and depredations. He also learns the proper value of a human touch in dehumanized times, and how such small gestures can have profound impact. Elsewhere, the Trio learn the meaning of the word 'unobtrusive' and how to apply it to themselves...

* * *

Review Replies: Three reviews for the past chapter. Love the comments made, and of course I have to reply in appropriate fashion :)

**Alex Yamato**: You know, I keep hearing about Slayers, and I am beginning to think I may have to visit that true Classic among anime series.

On his family, Eric trained into them what he could, though given the short nature of the training you can guess it was not entirely complete. On that note, I leave it to your imagination what becomes of them, and how that incomplete training will affect events to come. As to your betting, well, reading through the Jokers Wild series (and especially its notes and appendices) is answer enough, ne?

**Necroblade**: After the scaling of the Jokers Wild, I would have figured you to be the first to have seen that it is not merely one world I intend on altering, but many, many more. Of course, this just means the inevitable collision is just that much louder :)

On the issue of anti-wizardry, well, you can rest assured that prejudice will show up loud and hard, and be a very recurrent theme. Of course, defusing such problems won't be simple by any measure of the word, so...

Thank you once again for the beta assist, and good luck in your classwork.

**Knives91**: Well, the family members do have some allegiance to him, but not to the point of a support base. Also of note, that base has been shattered, with each member or group going their individual ways. I leave it up to you as to how well that turns out...

Thank you once more for the reviews! Even such an off-the-wall crossover as this has purpose, and the coming trials and side-stories will show in full bloom how far it can spider into the many fandoms of Existence. Stay tuned, it is only going to get more and more in-depth from here.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: No gripes, much thanks to **Necroblade** for editing my prose before publishing :)

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): A concept of my system of wizardry is that magic devices and persons with magic skills may 'borrow' a fraction of each other's power to cast spells. The method and percentage this is shown to be effective – and to what extent – will be covered at a later time.

(2): Vorpal enchantments serve two purposes. When used defensively, Vorpal will prevent physical failure of an object except when the penetrating weapon is itself vorpal. When used offensively, vorpal enchantments allow edged weapons (cutting, thrusting, or projectile) to penetrate any object, even something otherwise undefeatable (such as using a spear to punch through solid stone). There are three exceptions to this rule. One, a vorpal enchantment does not protect against any form of nuclear annihilation (antimatter or a spellcraft equivalent) or most energy attacks (lightning, laser weapons, etc). Two, vorpal enchantments do not affect normal spellcraft except for primarily kinetic attacks (such as _**Stone Shard**_). Three, there is a technologic equivalent to Vorpal enchantments, though it is classified at this time. (Bonus points to any of my frequent readers who can name what the technologic equivalent is.)

* * *

Included Works:

TABLETOP GAMES

—Dungeons and Dragons: the Vorpal enchantment is a take on the vorpal sword from first edition DnD, though heavily modified to do more than just remove limbs on a lucky blow.

VIDEO GAMES

—Tales of Phantasia: Honorable Mention goes to the spell _**Indignation**_, which though discussed in chapter is outside the realm of use by any of the Atrebas family at this time (Requires a Minimum DR of 85.000 to cast in its weakest form).

* * *

Spell Registry:

COMBAT WIZARDRY scope

Combat Attack branch (Black Wizardry, Assault Wizardry)

—Gale Blade: MinDR of 12.500, no material components required, target must be in atmosphere to cast. This spell produces a series of pressurized air blades that are capable of chopping through most physical objects that are not resistant to kinetic damage. For every 2.5 DR of the caster above 10, another blade is created in the air over the target, with the blades extending radially away from the target at even intervals. The length of the blades is one foot per three DR. The blades thus generated will descend through the target area until they expend their energy. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The native winds of the Sylph lands controlled, the arc of air shall descend in a Gale Blade. **_Variation:_** The native winds of the Sylvan lands controlled, the arc of air shall ASCEND in a Gale Blade, **_the latter which causes blades to be generated below the target (in terms of gravity plane) and to drive upward instead of the common descending version.

SPECIALIST WIZARDRY scope

Druidic Calling and Spellcraft

—Sylvan Regeneration: MinDR of 32.500, Rune of Sylvan Calling required under/around object to be regenerated, at least five leaves from a broadleaf or ten needles from a conifer tree are required as material components (used and consumed by the spell). Similar to the standard white-magic Regeneration spell, Sylvan Regeneration rebuilds the physical form of a living object from alterations or damage sustained to what is the spell's understanding of the proper form of that being. The proper form is an amalgam of environmental concerns, magical alterations and genetic disposition, though in the end the spell tends to lean more toward genetic concerns (especially when the environment is toxic or hazardous). The Sylvan Regeneration spell will regenerate 3 cubic inches of missing matter per minute per 10 DR of the caster, or will restore 10 cubic inches of damaged material in the being per minute per 10 DR, or a combination thereof. Note that this spell is a Sylvan spell, and as such is nature-based; any being that is non-natural (artifical constructs, golems, homonoculi, etc) will be unaffected by it (note that this does not apply to cloned or eugenically-gestated living beings, which while born artificially are still biologic by basis). Any being that possesses the 'Anti-natural' trait will be damaged progressively by the use of this spell, having its form turned to dust at a rate of 5 cubic inches per minute per 10 DR of the caster. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Green leaves dance, spirits of Nature energize unto one of your creation, restore the form intended with Sylvan Regeneration.**_

Any Regeneration spell works on the same basic principle, but has limitations. The regeneration works to counteract damage done over time (poisoning, radiation damage, old scars and wounds, et. al.) or loss of body parts, which are two things not covered by normal healing spells, though this comes at the cost of not being a fast healing spell by any major definition of the word. Note clearly, that there are three minor and three major limitations to this spell. The first minor limitation is that it will not return a person to their original form if in a Polymorph spell or operating with a relic that grants the user Polymorphic abilities (or similar abilities). The second minor limitation is that it will not eliminate the cause of continual damage, especially if it is something environmental. Thus, as one example, a person who is suffering from cancer can have any physical damage restored from the cancer, but without the use of a Cure Disease spell will eventually be killed by the disease. The third minor limitation is that a Regeneration spell of any type cannot override any form of Stasis Lock, Form Lock, Magic Lock, Magic Cancel, or Healing Cancel on the target. The first major limitation is that the total percentage amount of damage that can be restored or replaced by the spell is only 1 percent of a caster's DR or 25 percent, whichever is higher. Thus, for a caster to be able to restore 100 percent of a beings' form from damage, they would have to Transcend three times (technically, achieve a DR of 10,000). The second and most damning limitation of the Regeneration spells is that it will not under any circumstance resurrect or revive a being already dead. If a being is damaged to the point of death, the Regeneration spell will restore their sundered form but will not restore them to living condition; a Resurrect spell or similar is required to return them to living. If a person is killed by Ultrastring Switch (The easiest and most common form of this is an Instant Death spell) but is otherwise uninjured, a Regeneration Spell will have no effect on the being thus killed. The third limitation is that a Regeneration spell will not correct annihilation attacks that consume the entire being (antimatter annihilation, Force Magic attacks, Holy Particle Annihilation / Dark Substance Annihilation). In such a case the affected being is irrevocably damaged outside certain very specific and extremely rare disciplines, and most magic will not help them. In circumstances where only part of a being is annihilated and not killed (e.g. a hand is annihilated, but the rest of the person is unaffected), the being in question is not considered annihilated and can have the hand regenerated as normal.

—


	7. New World

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 7: New World)

AUTHOR'S CHAPTER FOREWORD:

This may seem a strange thing to put up here, but it bears mentioning in light of the content of this chapter.

INFINITE NUMERICAL POSSIBILITY THEOREM: This theory, which is the predication of the interdimensional crossover, holds the following thought above all others: "**if a given series of events and scenarios is possible, ergo does not violate the laws of physics or create an existential paradox, in some parallel dimension it WILL occur**." Thus, I hold the scenario listed below as plausible but incredibly unlikely, and though would seem a rather bad place for Eric to start off, makes for an interesting start point.

Note that this theory will come back to bite EVERYONE in the ass eventually. Just wait and see. I guarantee it.

* * *

The changing sign across the road declared a date of 17 November 2040, which after Eric began to understand the dating system, meant he arrived in this world on 14 November 2040. To what this date referenced, or to how it compared to where Eric came from, he had no reasonable way to guess. Even if he had a guess, though, it might not be accurate: what he had read about dimension travels, he knew things could have the same point of reference and still be wildly different, or could have wildly different reference points and yet be the same.

Eric's initial guesses to what the nature of the world was, a mass of hatred like no other, were very close to accurate.

He maintained the apropos of a street urchin, a transient displaced by the war. His physical condition (far better than most urchins) would not stand to that test, but Eric needed only avoid direct scrutiny to pass muster. It also helped that he had been lax on personal hygiene in recent weeks, especially with the oncoming Greeks in his home dimension making it harder and harder to access his typical bathing spring. For the rest, he had a plan to gather information.

Eric knew he needed information if he expected to survive in these new lands. Thus, he found an abandoned warehouse where other urchins were congregating, and took up residence against an otherwise unused column. It was not long before one of the urchins wandered over to speak to the new guy, whether to kill time, be friendly, or establish his place in the pecking order of urchins Eric could not guess.

"Got a beer, new guy?" Eric could guess the language the transient used was not Greek, but he was hearing it in his native tongue because he had several relics with translation ability. Conversely, anything Eric said in what he believed to be his language would be heard as their language, not his Greek patois.

Eric wasn't sure what a beer was, but he knew he didn't have one. "No," he replied simply.

"Damn," the urchin said. "Where you from?"

"Northwest of here," Eric answered.

"Ah, mountain territory," the urchin sat down. "Alpsjaeger territory."

"Alpsjaeger? The Nazis?" Eric asked in counter. In three days, he had picked up two names that were reviled: Imperial Japan and Nazis. So far their internal naming conventions didn't make much sense to him, but a guess was a guess.

"Yeah, " the urchin replied, confirming Eric had guessed right. "This is Imp-Japanese territory. What'd they do to you?"

"Wiped out my livestock, killed my woman and daughter," Eric replied, settled on the cover story he would use. A former livestock farmer, married with one daughter. "Nothing to stay in the mountains for."

"You are in good company," the urchin said. "Anything left of them?"

"Shadows and dust," Eric replied. "Shadows and dust."

"Here," the Urchin showed a picture to Eric. "Was my wife, until some Nazi pig found out she was a Jew. She was arrested, shipped off; I know she ended up in a jungle camp."

"Shadows and dust, my friend," Eric replied.

"Shadows and dust," the urchin agreed.

"Why do they do it?" Eric asked after a moment of silence.

"Dunno," the urchin replied. "Some say it's to purify the human race. Some say it's because they believe they are destined to be kings. I think it's because they love power, love fucking people out of everything they have had, everything they want to be." He snorted. "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"A failure throughout history," Eric commented. It was a safe aspersion: if the Romans were already screwing themselves as of when he was training, it went without saying that others would not learn the lesson.

"No way around it, though. The people want freedom, someone else will take it."

Eric grunted in response, though did so to conceal a near-squeal in response to the amount he had already learned. It was likely biased, but even in hatred the strongest kernels of truth could be found. Truth, Eric knew, was always something hard to find without cold eyes watching.

"Where can I find some food?" Eric asked after a few moments of silence.

"Catholic soup kitchen," the urchin replied after a second. "Three blocks west of here, in the old Cathedral. Talk to God, get some bread and soup. Fair tradeoff."

"Fair enough." Eric stood, his joints popping heavily as he took to leg.

"Shadows and dust, _amigo_," the urchin said by way of closing. The last part came across to Eric in native language, though it wasn't all that difficult for him to understand.

"See you on the other side," Eric replied evenly.

-x-

Finding the aforementioned cathedral was not difficult for Eric. In terms of structures, it was one of the largest Eric had seen in his lifetime, though the skyline of the city showed there were even larger structures in the distance. Such residence would be well beyond his present assumed social status, Eric figured, and to go there would likely spell death.

The soup kitchen entrance was set up in the rear of the cathedral, ostensibly to keep it out of sight of the reviled occupiers and thus protect the displaced. Eric participated in an easily-understood ritual to ensure he was not being followed, then whence the other participant went inside he became the door lookout. In less than the timespan of a complex thought (or a short spell), he again performed the same ritual with a newcomer and himself entered the kitchen.

"Welcome to Our Lady of the Resurrection Cathedral," a man dressed in black said. "You...are new here, are you not?" Eric nodded solemnly in affirmation of the religious leader's question. "When last have you spoken to God?"

Eric knew that he was referring to the concept of a single God to do it all, instead of the common principle of multiple Gods that he lived and operated under. This left Eric with only one answer that would not make him instantly suspect. "It has been long, before my home was torched and my family slain," Eric presented in proper form of his cover legend. His next hook was partially to ingrain himself into the local culture, partially proper etiquette for being in a foreign holy building, and mostly plain curiosity. "Have you a copy of the book you can spare?"

"Always," the Father disappeared into the main areas of the cathedral, leaving Eric with the holy ladies in the soup kitchen.

"Please be seated at one of the tables in the dining room, sir," the head lady in the kitchen requested.

"Thank you," Eric replied.

The dining area was populated but not crowded at this time of day, lending credence to what Eric considered an endemic problem of displacement among the civilians. The amount of homeless Eric had seen and parleyed with well exceeded even the shadiest of towns upon the world of his birth. That alone told of how much destruction and heartlessness he now existed in.

_No surrender, no retreat_, Eric's conscience told the rest of his mind.

A vegetable soup and a bread roll were presented to Eric by one of the ladies. He thanked her properly, though was slow to begin in on his meal. Listening to the other transients in the room took precedence, for understanding was Eric's first goal and greatest challenge in any problem he intended to solve. Food was a physical need he could mostly ignore for days if need be, and bypass with wizardry if absolutely necessary.

"You may keep this," the Father presented Eric with a small, easily-concealed copy of The Bible. "The chapel is open to all; you may use it to pray when you are ready."

"Thank you, Father," Eric replied evenly. Without further word, he opened the religious text and began reading. His curiosity would drive him to keep reading, though for someone born and raised in tradition of physical Gods and corporeal beings of power beyond common grasp, the nebulous nature of its contents did not echo well. The concept of the book, though, was far beyond anything the Greek Gods would come up with.

-x-

It was some time that evening that Eric came to a realization. His study of the religious text did not sway him to the dominant religion of this land, but it did enlighten him to a concept that the Rune Maidens had explained and Shiori had tried demonstrating.

_Though systems of belief are necessarily different, and to varying extents physical or not, all belief should be protected_, Eric mentally phrased the lesson inherent to the reading. The book did a good job in persuasion, though Eric was not moved notably in that direction because he knew the breadth of divinities in Existence covered much the same ground as this one God, and Eric had trained under their disciples. The great lesson of the book, however, was in more direct terms: Belief, honor, love, life. With that realization, Eric understood what his proper purpose was when he was commissioned by the Fates.

_Without Life, there can be no honor. Without honor, there can be no belief. Without belief there can be no love. Without the above, the Trickster shall win the Battle of Ragnarok. If Loki wins that victory, there can be no life_, Eric mentally stated his assessment of his findings. Arranged properly, it formed a circle of logic, which Eric had learned over the years of training could be the ultimate truth or the ultimate fallacy, depending on how it was used.

_Thus is my purpose: to break the cycle of degradation, in whole or in part, and prevent the annihilation of Existence_. Eric chuckled grimly, thinking of the possibility of going against a God in his present form, and considered rightly that he would be flattened. After a few moments, though, he put phrase to a different form of victory. _I can begin here_, Eric planned. _I will build the right to life among these suborned people by throwing off the chains. With life will come honor, with the honorable will come belief, and belief shall become love. Done right, I can show an entire world what awaits Existence, and those with stout hearts can join me in challenging the inevitable annihilation_.

_This will require much work_, Eric thought but did not say. _It will require time well in excess of what I rightly have available. No matter, my spellcraft can restore my physical form, so long as I am not disabled or killed. The remaining challenge is in how to do battle with such massive entities as the Imperial Japanese Army and the Nazi Wehrmacht._

"Has God shown you what you must do with your life, my son?" the Father asked from behind Eric when he closed the bible and set it down on the pew.

"Yes and no," Eric replied. "Your text has confirmed two things for me, two very important things Father. It has confirmed that I do not know which religion among the many is right, or if any of them are right, or if all are right."

"God and his agents go by many names, my son. That alone is the greatest secret of life," the Father said.

Eric nodded solemnly, although he still wasn't convinced he understood the logic thereof, and thus was not ready to accept it. "The other realization is a bit simpler, Father: while I am unsure if there is a Heaven in Existence, I am assured that Hell exists within arm's reach of certain parties."

The Father chuckled, not overlooking the veiled analogy in Eric's phrasing. "What do you intend, my son?"

"For my life, I will search for the former," Eric held up the Bible at eye level; "and though these scriptures say I am already damned, while I search for Heaven I will make it a point to eradicate Hell and its minions."

The Father was silent for a few moments. "You are serious? These foes are Satan's throngs, my son. They cannot be defeated in fashion you or I can achieve normally."

Eric did not miss the symbolism or the rather direct warning offered. "Then pray for me Father, but do not follow in my footsteps. For where I intend to tread, common man does not walk, only the damned or the honorable damned."

Eric returned to the streets as he walked in, hungry but ready. He walked in ready to understand, he walked out ready to act.

-x-x-x-

(20 November 2040, 1230 hours)

"Good God," Carlos gaped at the television on the sandwich vendor's cart. "Mumbai?"

"Yeah," the vendor replied with clear dejection. "Too much rebellion, the Nazis decided to make an example out of them. Whole city, gone in a blaze." The television was showing the satanic mushroom cloud expected of a 2-megaton nuclear weapon detonating over such a populated city. Nobody wanted to see such a horror, be it on television or in real life, but few could look away with any reasonable success, either.

"Now you know why they are Nazis; if they can't hack it as pure evil, they get demoted," Tabitha griped. "Their bitch-boys in the IJA aren't all that far behind, either." She was not concerned about speaking such in the presence of the sandwich vendor, for she knew he was the CO of a different rebellion cell in the southeast quadrant of town.

"And now you know why we're here," The youngest of the persons purchasing sandwiches said. "At least they seem intent on depopulating India first, not South America."

"Doesn't help those poor bastards in India, though," Carlos replied sardonically.

"Every ten years or so, they nuke a rebellious city just to show how tough they are," Tabitha complained. "Who knows, we may be next in a decade."

"I hope not," Carlos said.

"In ten years, they will still be slogging through Mother Russia," Vladimir judged as the group walked away from the vendor. 'Iron Hand' Vladimir was Soviet Spetsnasz, just as hard as the tales of their rank were exaggerated, and just as cold about reality as Russians were always said to be. He usually started on the 'pessimist' side of any argument, and if there was cause to 'upgrade' to more idealistic standing, he did so very slowly.

Vladimir noted the presence of a bum in an alleyway near the vendor, apparently asleep under some kind of shawl or light blanket, but also the tip of what appeared to be a knife scabbard on said bum. After a little more thorough a look-down, he concluded that it was just another street-bum with a knife to protect whatever he considered 'his turf'. Carlos also viewed him, but did not scrutinize as much as the Spetsnasz operator.

"Okay, Kari, Daniel, where is he?" Tabitha asked, calling upon the kids and their 'special talents' to smoke out their quarry for the day.

"Shosa Yoshinba is coming this way right now," Kari said, having been 'looking' for him for some time. "Other side of the road, left to right."

"Ah," 'Tabby' (Tabitha's nickname to a very select few) grunted before she took a bite of her sandwich. "Surprisingly low-key for such a monster," she said.

"He knows he isn't scoring any points with the people by his actions," Daniel said, deliberately looking away from said officer. Normally the higher-rank officers would demand deference from the civilians in the same fashion that the old feudal Samurai would, but some officers bucked the trend. It did not make them any less a monster than the rest of the Imperial Japanese officers, but at least they weren't outright assholes about their suborning of South America (and elimination of 30 percent of its population). "He figures if he keeps low-key, choppin' people's heads off won't track to him."

"Like hell," Carlos groused. "Give me thirty seconds alone with him, I'd like to introduce my machete," he said without fingering the handle of said blade.

"Easy, _amigo_," Tabby said. "Those katana they carry are nothing to sneeze at. I've seen more than a few upstarts cut down to size by 'em."

"That street bum we walked by could take him," Carlos jerked his thumb back at the bum that Vladimir had scrutinized. Much as expected, the same guy was still sitting there, doubtless waiting for an opportunity to raid the sandwich vendor or someone who passed by. Tabitha and Kari both noticed the knife scabbard, but neither figured it as unexpected. Despite the direct reference, the bum continued sleeping, apparently unperturbed by the attention.

"He looks fit enough," Tabby admitted, and then shrugged off the turn of conversation. Their purpose was Yoshinba, not a street bum. "Okay, he goes there for lunch every day. How do we want to do this?"

"Bomb, sniper, ambush to or from," Vladimir enumerated his ideas. "I can think of no other way that would succeed without our death."

"Bomb," Tabitha judged. "He clears out the restaurant, and the tables have an air gap that we can put a device in."

"Directional mine?" Carlos asked, showing his bloody nature through and through. Directional devices had some amount of explosive power real close, but most of their damage was done with shrapnel and fragmentation thrown in a conical arc defined by the geometry of the device. The major contender in the directional market was the German 'Busty' mines, so known for their two lumps on the front that enhanced their radial kill factor in close, but diffused the maximum range.

"We could," Tabitha admitted. "Have to minimize casualties, so we want it remotely detonated."

"Sniper is still an option," Vladimir said. "Less sure than a bomb or ambush since you only get one shot, but our snipers are the rivals of NKVD Spetsnasz snipers in rifle skills," he hedged his own doubts.

His doubts still bled through. "You don't trust your own logic," Tabby said.

"These grounds, not very good for rifle work. Plenty of directions to get out, but not enough depth of distance to make it a safe shot."

Cell Ccommander Tabitha Fesner nodded; what she could see of the area matched his appraisal, there was not enough space for a decent shot without chancing being cornered in a medium-rise building. She did not look around, since such actions usually drew attention to operators – more than one cell had been busted like that. Disparity of appearance also raised eyebrows and thereafter questions – Tabitha's cell didn't look wildly different, but they did not look the same between them. Paying overt attention to a target also drew ire from the target – only Vladimir was looking toward them, and he gave the appearance of thinking about something else, not focusing on anything. The kids – Kari and Daniel – were gaming against each other with a pair of handhelds, Tabby was writing on a notepad while chowing down on her sandwich, and Carlos was talking to a lady separate from the group.

All in all, the group met from separate routes, established a plan over lunch quickly, gave all appearance of only barely being together, and would depart separately, dispersing into the crowd and taking separate paths back to their meet points. They would operate separately, they would shop separately, and they had routes devised to allow them to check each other for surveillance.

This was their world: paranoia, insurgency, and the hope they could make a difference. They were not alone; the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazis and Imperial Japanese lent credence to the rebellion, to the point that no suborned nation lacked a diversity of rebels. They could only chip away at the machines, but chips would eventually destroy the structure of the machine.

-x-x-x-

(21 November 2040, 2200 hours)

Eric rested against a wall outside a facility called a 'nightclub'. From what he could guess on snippets of conversation, it would be a lively place in a few minutes, with the beginning of the musician's act.

"This is gonna be awesome, these are old-school metal songs!" a teenager said as she led her group of three past where Eric was sitting.

_Awesome_, Eric mentally echoed, considered how the word was being used by the girl. He decided after a fashion that she was either misusing the word (divine-rank spellcraft was awesome, music generally did not count), or a new local definition of the word existed, or his ring was not quite translating correctly. After someone else dropped the word in earshot, Eric figured the second option of three was the likely answer; certainly education standards would be severely higher than his homeland, given the marvels of this land and the prerequisite knowledge requirements to use them properly.

The crowd of patrons continued filing into the building, even as the performers inside began their instrument checks. From what Eric could hear by way of an open window, even the instrument and vocal checks were something of a matter of crowd-enthralling even without the beginnings of a song.

Some unseen gesture caused the crowd inside to roar their affection to the players, before the sound of instruments began an aggressive medley of both throat and energy, a combination of three instruments that Eric did not recognize but assumed at least one was a string. A short group of lyrics imposed over some instruments was followed by another instrument solo and vocal harmony; Eric considered it a bit unusual to have the song go back and forth as such, but did not question the charm thereof.

On the second stanza of lyric, the former Durgan Bladesman knew what the song's intent was. Eric recognized it as a retelling of the tale of the Sirens, where sailors would hear their calls on the open sea and turn toward, only to have their ships dashed against the rocks of an inhospitable isle and become the feast of the Siren herself. The long instrumental portions added only to the mystery of such tale told, Eric figured, though therein the subject could naught but be the greatest of nightmares for those on the sea. The female vocalist also went a good way to conveying the supposed allure of said creatures; Eric judged on voice alone she would be something to look at.

The cheering as the song faded into its end told how much the band was respected by the audience. "That was _The Siren_, from the works of the author of the Nightwish suite, a band that could have been," the female lead vocalist said. "A band that could have been," she echoed. "Our next song comes from our own works, this is _Hidden Eyes_."

The song started similar to the prior, with a combination of instruments that mixed strings, winds, and something that Eric could not even begin to guess what it was. The drums, of many types, only served to accent the song and the primary instrument the band used.

The female lead began the vocal part:

"_Alone at night, I hear the sounds;_

_Boots in the streets, the clang of bolts_."

Another instrument solo, this one intoned to engender the feeling of sorrow by its riffs.

"_Alone in the night, I hide from the sounds,_

_The sobs of woman, the defiance of man, the silence after._"

The screech of the primary instrument was accented by the loud slam of drums, creating an impressive crescendo. The next stanza was that of the male lead, a gruff voice that reminded Eric of his Norse comrades from long ago.

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not see the flag,_

_The banner of the Rising Sun_?"

The song slowed down, though not to the point of the beginning segue. Eric resolved to consider the symbolism later, and focused on the female lead's words once more.

"_Alone in the days, I wander torn streets,_

_Living the lives denied to my blood._

_Alone in the days, I hide in the shadows,_

_Disheartened, violated, cursed, depressed_."

Again the screech of instrument as the song shifted once more to the refrain. The Nordic quality of the male lead's voice truly reminded Eric of his days doing training battle with the Vikings.

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not hear the voice,_

_The sound of wailing shadows_?"

The song's pace slowed down once more, but less than the second bracket. The drums took a moment to solo, followed by another frightening crash of the primary instrument and then a loud slam of the drums. The following silence was almost stunning to Eric, until the female's voice broke the still air.

"_Alone at the end, I stare at blades,_

_Living the lies the supermen have promised._

_Alone at the end, I hear no sound,_

_The flash of red, the instant of release_."

A screech of instrument preceded the next stanza of refrain; Eric focused close, knowing the end would show a different point of symbolism. He was not disappointed.

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not see the flag,_

_The banner of perverted luck_?" (1)

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not see the flag,_

_The banner of the Rising Sun_?"

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not see the flag,_

_The banner of perverted luck_?"

The instruments, except for a light snare drum, came to an end. Only the sound of the female lead broke the semi-silence.

"_Alone at the gates, I lay in blood,_

_Released from mortal suffering._

_Alone at the gates, I lay on clouds,_

_Arcadia__ waits for one and all_."

Eric expected the final crash of instruments, and he was not disappointed. The final refrain was the most haunting of all:

"_Do you hide for yourself?_

_Unable to live without the echoes of family?_

_Do you hide for your soul?_

_Can you not see the end,_

_The annihilation of all mankind_?"

The cheering from inside the clandestine music hall was only beginning, even as Eric began working his way through the symbolism of the song. He wondered why a young lady walked past him, one that he had glimpsed in the throng of music fans, and why she was diddling with a small electronic device.

Eric made sure he transcribed the lyrics he heard word for word in a special magical tome that captured the song both as was initially heard and as Existence intended it to be heard. The former was almost always an echo of the song as it was played, the latter could vary wildly depending on the song thus transcribed. Thankfully, Norse Runes were easily written on the fly to convey long thoughts with short written phrases.

-x-x-x-

(24 November 2040, 1100 hours)

Suzanne stepped over the legs of a bum in an alley, cued by Carlos to some kind of happening in the next street over. She did notice when the bum stood and began shuffling toward her, but figured he was also interested in what was to happen. Silently she checked her cargo pocket for the concealed holster that housed her Glock 41, a 10mm monstrosity that gave her a fighting chance against the 'supermen' of the SS.

"Suzanne, over here," Carlos waved her over cautiously, to avoid drawing attention of the Nazis.

"What's goin' on?" she asked.

"Band said some mean things about the Nazis and the IJA, so they're against the wall. Caught 'em preparing for a gig in the old warehouse area."

"No hope?" by which, she meant no hope for direct action to prevent their demise.

"No hope, the IJA are pissed at these guys and gal."

"Such a waste," Suzanne said. "Who's the Kraut fuck CO?"

"Sturmbannführer Karl Grosse," Carlos replied deadpan. (2)

"That shithead," Suzanne griped quietly.

"Go ahead, sing your song," the SS officer said.

Suzanne noted a hint of movement on the wall adjacent to the corner nearby where the band was lined up with backs to bricks. The same bum that she had stepped over had slumped down against the wall, apparently too weak to move far or fast or to remain standing, and was now watching the spectacle from the ground. Suzanne thought something about his actions appeared to be some kind of act, but she could not put a description to how he was acting; he really looked and after a fashion smelled like a typical homeless man.

"Go ahead, sing your song," the SS officer said again. "We would love to hear it."

Only the tone-deaf could not hear the tone of fear in the voices of the female lead and male lead as they sang. Nine assault rifles aimed at a mere five bodies, the support machine gun of the unit standing aside but armed and ready for action if the crowd grew restless. It would not be the first time a crowd surged on a Nazi squad, only to be mowed down by 'Hitler's Buzzsaw' like a Canadian pine facing off against a logging chainsaw, an axiom of her former homeland. The pine would resist mightily, but in the end there could only be one winner.

Suzanne knew the song, she had heard it before since she hawked the metal concerts. She thought she had done a good job keeping an eye out for informants at their last venue, but someone may have bypassed the security detail's careful eyes and knowing ears. Getting them all was impossible, and it only took one to bring a band down or trip a raid at a concert. The jungle concentration camps were particularly dissuading to most people to prevent them stepping out of line, and the execution of artists as per Nazi / IJA policy was even more so. The metalheads policed themselves, but the ability to see into one's soul was limited to very few, and two of the only known worked for the Rebellion.

It was at the stanza "_Alone at the gates, I lay on clouds, __Arcadia__ waits for one and all_" that the Nazis opened up, each dumping a burst into the four musicians. The ricochet rounds from the bricks behind the musicians tore in multiple directions, two windows breaking near and one far, and a pair of civilians in the front row of observers downed by the errant slugs. Even the bum in the alley took a hit, or appeared to as he slumped away from the crowd and the Nazis.

The Nazi officer holstered his pistol and looked to the crowd. "Listen up, all of you!" he shouted in literate Spanish. "Arcadia may await you at the end, but until that day your mortal bodies and souls belong to the Imperial Japanese and/or the National Socialists. If you want to delay finding out what Arcadia looks like, I suggest you all begin adhering to the National Policy. You are dismissed."

Carlos and Suzanne did not waste time taking the Nazi up on his offer of dismissal. They headed down the alley the bum was in, even as said bum staggered down the causeway and finally lost his footing. A trail of blood droplets provided enough evidence that he had indeed been hit, but to what severity the hit came was unknown. "You, transient, you all right?" Carlos asked before said bum slumped against a wall.

When Suzanne approached, she noticed the bum was holding a relatively clean rag against the wound already; the bullet had landed roughly on his left shoulder, a bit high though not into the all-important brachial plexus or low enough to clip the lung. "I have been struck worse," he replied before he stood again, this time with a little more gusto and a lot more stability. The eerie, almost precise method of speaking caught Suzanne's attention, but she could place nothing about his accent, just that it sounded foreign—almost European.

"You need a medic, man?" Carlos pressed.

"I will see to this shortly," the bum said more to the wall than anyone. "Do not concern over me, I will survive."

"You say so, man," Carlos said before he stepped past. "That's one hard motherfucker," he said after another alley's distance.

"We should have stopped and helped him."

"Would have blown our cover," Carlos countered. "If he does survive, maybe we'll bring him in as a _Sicario_ (3). For sure he'll have no love for the Nazis after that incident."

"Find me someone not brainwashed that does love the Nazis," Suzanne commented dryly.

"_Si, senorita_," Carlos replied in Spanish.

-x-x-x-

(30 November 2040, 1230 Hours)

Minor incidents in Eric's purview only added more fuel to the inferno inside his mind. Here and there, the affronts of the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis as they forced their will onto the people they suborned – sometimes with overt violence and bloodshed, other times with intimidation and thinly-veiled threats. In due time, it all added up to an unpleasant picture – and each facet of the mosaic simply confirmed Verthandi's words.

A dozen methods of justification came to mind for him to crash the governments now running the bulk of a planet ragged. War crimes (by their own laws, not necessarily Durgan's), civilian slaughter, overt oppression, and religious intolerance were four among many, but the loudest was arrogance. Never once had Eric met anyone who held the level of arrogance and centrality that the Nazis and IJA held. Arrogance, to such a degree that it could, and eventually would, consume the entire planet in death and destruction.

In common operations, Eric would easily have disregarded the arrogance; his training both schooled him in showing no arrogance and ignoring other arrogance. The true nature of the problem of arrogance came to be when considering the actions of the SS and IJA. Arrogance combined with racial superiority and a complete disregard for the lives of the vanquished created bloodshed like no other, like nothing Eric had seen before, much less visited on other beings. It was both disheartening and infuriating to see people slaughtered so callously, and just as infuriating that the civilians could not hope to match their oppressors.

On the other hand, two weeks of watching them in action was enough to teach him the finer points of their etiquette. They knew they were the kings of the land, and they flaunted their physical power to anyone and everyone. On the other hand, they had no manner of defense or offense in Eric's primary method of combat, wizard combat, leaving them with a wide-open vulnerability.

"Nomad, want a slightly-burnt chicken sandwich?" the mobile sandwich vendor asked from five meters down the sidewalk.

"It would be appreciated," Eric replied quietly.

"Heads up." The wrapped sandwich was thrown to Eric, who had no problem catching it.

"Much obliged _amigo_," Eric said before he began the process of unwrapping it.

Eric simply sat and waited for the Shosa as he came to his usual restaurant for lunch. The routine was always the same; at 1215 the restaurant would turn off their 'open' sign, and people would begin leaving in small groups; never were clients in the building when 1230 rolled around. For Eric, such predictability made things dead simple in terms of an ambush, and even simpler for the use of spellcraft. A regular target could even be slain by a trap rune activated at the right time, meaning no direct spell enchantment was needed to strike the kill.

The feel of the bullet as it passed through his body, a bullet that had slain the female lead of the band he watched executed, was still fresh in Eric's memory. Despite this, it was not a vengeance action; Eric had been steadfastly taught first by Durgan and later by the Fates that vengeance is a frightful course of action that often led to failure. Eric justified his actions based on his orders from the Fates: train anyone who can learn how to solve the problems of Existence, and act to solve those problems as possible. For Eric, the existence of the Nazis and Imperial Japanese Army posed two problems: first, they were a threat to his own well-being, second, they depleted the possible pool of recruits with every action they took against the people.

The Shosa came to the restaurant at his usual hour, and Eric waited. In terms of the various officers around town, Shosa Yoshinba was better than most but far from benign by any definition of the word. He did not test the sharpness of his katana on the civilians at random, but he did not shy away from using said blade when he felt he had been offended. Eric noted the presence of the guy that had asked him if he needed a medic in the alley a week past, though the lady he had been traveling with was nowhere to be found. The Samaritan and two others were standing on the sidewalk, milling about in the area of a closed clothing store, but none of the three seemed inclined to purchase anything from the merchant within. The guy that had seen him prior rightly identified him, again slumped against the alley wall of a building, and decided to approach.

"You are alive, _amigo_?" he asked after a moment nearby the sandwich vendor to order lunch.

"Only sore," Eric admitted before he took a bite of his sandwich.

"Nice," the guy said before he received his sandwich and paid for it. "Good luck getting' on your feet, _amigo_," he said.

To Eric's trained eyes, he saw both means and deep-seated hatred. The utility blade he carried would be a formidable weapon in close, matched to Eric's gladius in superior blade length but not in combat style. Eric thought he had identified one hand-firearm on his form, but no major arsenal such as carried by the subordinates of the Shosa. His comrades appeared armed similar at a distance, though Eric figured himself cheating due to being seated on the ground and could readily identify their weapons with a razor-sharp eye.

"What the fuck is this?" the sandwich vendor asked nobody in particular, looking to the restaurant across the street.

Eric had missed the initial disturbance, but the aftermath was clearly visible to him. A Japanese infantryman was dragging a wailing teen out of the restaurant by the back of her server's uniform, followed by two more infantry and the Shosa himself. Traffic on the road was light, most of it foot traffic at that, so the infantryman dragged her out into the middle of the street and forced her to kneel.

The Shosa followed close, his katana held at his side and in sheath. The lady continued wailing as the Shosa approached, though stopped as his shadow crossed her view range. The next steps were stylized and necessary of the process, though simply a formality and to Eric's mind just a matter to draw out the process of the execution. Eric could not figure out why she was charged with death, though as the Shosa rotated to face Eric saw what appeared to be a tea stain on his uniform.

The blade was drawn and readied, the sheath handed off to a subordinate officer. Eric knew what was coming as the blade went up, then with hardly a sound came down on the back of her neck. Her body collapsed forward and to the right, the head went forward and left as the crowd let out a collective gasp. Some muttering came from the crowd as the Shosa yanked a dish towel from her apron and used it to clean his sword.

The body was unimpressive to Eric; he had seen the dead before, in piles and droves and files and executed corpses. The head was the haunting edifice of this execution; by chance, it landed in such a fashion that it was staring lifelessly at Eric. The face itself was also nondescript to Eric, nothing particularly attractive but nothing to qualify as a turnoff to the Durgan warrior. The sadness in the eyes, the expression of knowing one minor accident was her end, was what haunted Eric in the moments he saw into her eyes before an IJA infantryman picked the head up by the hair.

"This is what happen when disrespect officers," the IJA infantryman showed the head to the minor crowd assembled. The head was callously tossed into the gutter nearby Eric, and again it landed to stare blankly, sadly in his direction.

_And this is what happens when you disrespect the innocent_, Eric thought but did not say. When the group began back toward the cafe they came from, Eric knew this was his chance to begin depopulating the IJA one officer at a time. "_**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of forever with an arc of Lightning**_," Eric chanted quietly, low enough that even the sandwich vendor nearby did not hear him over the crowd's din.

As Eric's gaze rested on the Shosa's back, he was the being struck first by the arc of lighting. In the instant of strike, the lightning first contacted the Shosa on his rank insignia of his hat, jumped the gap from the metal pin to his skull, and began a short trip through the brain and to his spine. As it headed downward through his neck, the lightning bolt spidered in five directions, two down through his legs and to the ground, one from his left chest metal pins and jumped the gap to an infantryman's rifle, one across his left arm and sword to his primary subordinate officer, and one across his right arm to a different infantryman.

The gigawatts of energy transferred through the Shosa and nearby officers into the ground literally cooked the three involved persons where they stood, but more to the point the transfer of such energy took on a kinetic component. Billions of watts of energy distributed into such a small space in a near-instantaneous discharge had to convert energy somehow, and the only efficient ways to release such energy were thermal and kinetic. The Shosa was blown backwards across the road and into the deceased body of the waitress he beheaded, his eyes staring into the sky as lifeless as the lady's eyes staring at Eric. The infantryman to the Shosa's right was flung three meters in that direction, to land on the hood of a small vehicle as the ammunition in his rifle's magazine cooked off. Yoshinba's immediate subordinate was catapulted low across the ground, bouncing twice before slamming head-first into the bumper of a large delivery vehicle, his head grotesquely left twisted and rotated at an impossible angle.

Some in the crowd shrieked their aural protest to the lightning strike, some fled away from the impact site. One Infantryman stepped away from where the lightning had grounded, and in so doing became a conductor for the charge now in the ground; his exasperated screech was accented by the sight of some of the ammunition on his harness cooking off from the passage of electricity, before the transfer of energy balanced and he collapsed down, dead and smoldering.

Most in the crowd simply stared at the scene, content to see an Imperial Japanese officer dead, even if 'by the hand of God' as most claimed.

_More is the better, I can kill IJA and Nazi officers like this without ever drawing suspicion_, Eric thought as he listened to the civilians around him praying to God. Most were thanking Him for His strike against the IJA officers, never aware that the bum sitting in the alley was the one who called down the thunder. After all, what is the strike of lightning but the work of an angry God or Gods?

-x-x-x-

(30 November 2040, 1430 Hours)

"Oh my God, that was the most frightening thing I have ever seen," Carlos gaped as he retold the story for the fourth time, this time to the armor technicians.

"What happened, _amigo_?" One of the junior armor techs asked.

"We had set up to blow the Shosa's party to hell with a 'Busty' mine, and were waiting for a good opportunity to splat them all, when the Shosa got a tea stain. He dragged the offending waitress outside and beheaded her in the middle of the street. Fuckin' tea stain, beheading," and Carlos waved his arms in a rendition of an unbalanced scale for visual effect. "Anyway, I had the detonator armed and ready to catch the bastards on the way in to the cafe again, when this huge-mother-fuckin' lightning bolt slams into Yoshinba's head. You can guess how that ended."

"God cooks another IJA puke," a particularly religious Armor Tech answered for their thoughts. "Too bad we can't just give Him a target list and watch the sparks fly."

"If we expect help from God, we have to start by helping ourselves," another Junior Armor Tech replied.

"Anyway, with the lightning strike, we headed out. I'll break in and collect the mine later tonight or tomorrow, that way it isn't captured. IJA and Nazi officers will likely never use that bistro again, so..."

"Good, you're here," Suzanne, the senior armor tech for the IA-3 detail, said as she came across Carlos. "Might as well strip and get ready, you have some serious work to do today, mister."

"Oh boy," Carlos deflated on himself when told he had 'work' to do. 'Work' in this context meant running around in his underwear in an exoskeleton designed to aid in the understanding of movement as it translated to mechanical emulation for the Infantry Armor project. It was hot, heavy, strenuous, and somewhat hazardous work; one of the other 'test subjects' for the project had an arm broken and nearly sliced through by a rogue pneumatic fitting that blew from his exoskeleton system.

On the other hand, the other two test subjects for the armor systems were female. Carlos reminded himself it was always fun to watch them in action.

"Aren't we getting close to having the motive understanding done?" The elder of the two 'test subject' ladies asked.

"Another fifty or sixty hours on the female side, and at least another thirty on the male side, and we should be done," Suzanne replied. "The first armor prototypes are being fabricated for the three of you now. We need the motive control systems to be flawless; one wrong command in the real deal, and it could kill you from an incorrect muscle reflex."

"Eep, not cool," the younger of the female testers said. The full-on armor systems were mobile by way of Myomer musculature, a technological analog to human muscles but at significantly higher strength and flex characteristics. Enough power was contained in a kilo of Myomer that when activated it would drag a 2.5-ton passenger car a full meter with the parking brakes on. This made it fantastic for the Infantry Armor project started by the United States and bequeathed to the rebel groups, but it also made it onto the list of necessities for the Standing Armor projects in development by the Japanese and Nazi regimes.

"Come on, all three of you," Suzanne gestured to the Armor Engineering lab, and by extension the waiting exoframes inside.

"A truly grim fandango for those three," Vladimir 'Iron Hand' Pevlekov said in literate Spanish. It was not his primary language, but he learned fast when he was told Mother Russia wanted him helping out in Brazil. He also did not envy the development pains the three were going through to work out the bugs in the armor system, though his assistance (and the assistance of the NKVD) came at the price of design schematics to make their own.

"This is where I bug out," Marcos, the resident fighter pilot (without a fighter) admitted without shame. He had done time in the exoframes, and his arm still wasn't 100 percent restored from the injuries he took.

"There is no shame in hiding, especially if it keeps you out of the path of imminent danger," Vladimir agreed.

"Bonus points if hiding gives you a good chance of ambushing the enemies later?" Marcos asked on his way out the door. Vladimir didn't bother answering, since it was part of his common phrasing anyways.

The sound of a scream from the engineering lab presaged the beginning of the daily operational frustration for the three guinea pigs. With that beginning, all became right in the rebel's world, even despite the bizarre beginning to the day for their attempt to kill a certain Shosa.

-x-x-x-

(4 December 2040, 2145 Hours)

Finding a decent selection of targets was not all that difficult for Eric, especially at night. German soldiers stood out more than Japanese soldiers, and both were about as obvious as a Roman Legionnaire would have been walking up and down these roads. For the Mage, it was technically incredibly simple, even in higher-class areas of town; there was always an alley to skulk around in and target the hated foes.

The greatest asset Eric had was his semi-backward stealth. He was perfectly visible; more to the point, two Nazi low-level officers had seen him and spit on him as they passed by. On the other hand, so long as he had clear line of sight to a viable target, something would get cooked.

The problem wasn't so much finding targets, as finding a target high enough to warrant the strike. In this sense Eric found himself out of his depth; where normally he had no trouble identifying a leader from a wall of enemy forces, the Nazi soldiers were not so easily identified. After a fashion, Eric came to the conclusion that he would eventually have to take one of these Nazi fellows prisoner and beat some understanding of their rank and organization structure out of them. He was learning a lot from the other displaced persons around the city, but how to identify one Nazi from another was not on that list.

On the other hand, Eric had derived a new trick from a media report on an explosion downtown, giving him a reason to use his classic _**Fireball**_ area-blast spell. A video-illusion replay of a vehicle exploding in fire and shrapnel brought to mind the second use of a _**Fireball**_ spell to Eric. When used against a hollow object (buildings or kegs being two common examples from home), the fireball could be detonated inside the object instead of against its surface. The modification to the spell was only one word extra, and was commonly taught alongside the primary version of the spell.

Time passed, as Nazis came and went. This early at night, more came, though when an 'antique' Kubelwagen approached to pick up three departing officers Eric knew he had his target. He surreptitiously pointed to the vehicle by way of only moving his hand, his arm for all intents and purposes still close to his body. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy within in a massive Fireball"**_, Eric chanted under his breath, his head shrouded by the hood of his cloak and his left index finger pointing to the right rear fender of the German staff car.

The explosion was both immediate and extremely violent. Eric had given the nearby civilians as much time and space as possible to avoid killing them, but the doorman suffered a piece of vehicle that struck against his left leg and appeared to be permanently crippled. The three officers were assuredly dead, with one of their officer hats having landed nearby where Eric was sitting; the driver would have been the first sundered by the blast, and assuredly the most merciful of the kills.

The environment fared just as horrid as the Nazis. Four passenger vehicles nearby were crippled, two set on fire and began burning rapidly due to fuel oil fires. Every piece of glass within sight to where Eric was sitting had been shattered, including the normally super-tough glass housings for the street lights. A single lamppost had been sheared from its base and sent askew, downed in the street in such a fashion as to obstruct vehicles. A crater now existed below where the vehicle had been destroyed, and Eric thought he could detect the distinct aroma of human shit on the air now coming his way, doubtless from the disgusting but necessary pipe system under the roads for the transport of human waste..

"_LIEBER GOTT_!" A German officer shouted in his native language, to which Eric could not understand because he removed his enhancer ring. That his spellcraft was natively used in Greek would make it veritably impossible to understand, should someone even hear it.

As the straggling civilians began closing in on the scene of what they assumed to be guerrilla combat, Eric chuckled silently to himself. It would be well under the din of the raging fuel fire that Eric gave his proclamation.

"I give three more to your ranks, Hel, and a promise of many more to come," he said in classic Norse, that he would be understood only by said Goddess and no other. He knew he was only adding to her minions and therefore to the eventual enemy force of Ragnarok, but those removed from the mortal coil today could not beget a far larger amount of foes over time. It was a classic paradox of logistics over time: foes now could be slain or spared, but those spared only multiplied and added up to larger forces the longer it was delayed.

_Why, thank you, young Mage. I will put them to good use_, someone responded to Eric's oath by telepathy. The voice was female but far from the voice of a crone or demon, almost sultry inside the confines of his mind. After a fashion, Eric expected no less from the Goddess of the Underworld. By everything Eric had learned of said goddess, she was a far cry from Hades, the resident netherworld divinity of his birth-lands.

Nazi _Sturmtruppen_ (Stormtroopers) ran by Eric's position to the nightclub, hoping to render aid to a hopeless scenario. Eric watched on listlessly, assured nobody could identify him as the point-source of the attack. He was correct beyond his wildest imagination.

-x-x-x-

(7 December 2040, 1330 Hours)

A rebel by night, but a volunteer by afternoon and a sleeping angel throughout the morning, Katy Hoyos wore many hats and shared many experiences with those she related to. Her actions touched many, helped many more; for her, such kindness was more than enough payback to the lands that sheltered her from the Imperial Japanese.

Her afternoon job did not need to be an income task; her duties in the rebellion provided everything she needed for her daughter and two sons. She also wanted to make sure she was well away from the prying eyes of the Nazi SS and IJA OID (Operational Intelligence Division), thus she needed to be somewhere where they would not go consciously. Some of the rebellion cells hung out in the sewer and waste treatment works, augmenting their financing with their wages for cleaning crap, others worked around town in menial positions doing the scut work of society as a cover legend for their violent primary job.

For Katy, her work was in the Catholic Soup Kitchens around the city. Every week, she rotated to a different cathedral around town to help out with cleaning and staff training; she had a decade of maid work and cooking experience, which lent itself well to teaching others how to do the same. Moving around also helped expose her to the transients, some of which worked as informants for the rebellion. Lastly, her mobility also put her in frequent contact with other rebellion cells, allowing her to coordinate with the other cells and discuss matters of mutual interest.

Mostly, she wanted to help fix some of the suffering caused by the Japanese. Her suffering had began with the invasion of Panama, then with the attempted arranged marriage to a very sexually frustrated businessman, then continued over the span of years with her continual movement and hiding. She had been raped twice (she counted her arranged marriage as a rape, he was drunk and she didn't want it), had spent more than half the past decade starving, had nothing to her name in terms of actual assets or money, and was technically a criminal in four separate fashions. Except for the criminal acts, she was over the bulk of it; she now sought to help others walk away from their miserable circumstances, in more ways than one.

Katy did not see nor hear the approach of one cloaked transient, of which she always thought of as 'modern nomads' in homage to their will to survive. That he entered without anyone seeing him was just as shocking; the nuns she frequently worked with were very observant and almost always heard someone approach. Thus, when she looked up to see a hooded and robed figure standing across the table she was cutting vegetables at, she half-panicked and jumped away from him. Her hand caught on the rim of the stock pot she was working with and threatened to drag it to the floor as she jolted; the robed figure beat her reaction deftly, however, as a fast hand shot to the pot handle and prevented it leaving the table.

"Who—how did you get in here?" Katy asked, still trying to overcome the shock of being approached without any warning.

"An open door," the cloaked guy replied. He sounded older than she was, and almost preternaturally calm. The letter-perfect Spanish he spoke was almost eerie to her ears, but far from impossible in her estimation. Many people from all walks of life had been displaced by the Japanese, and this was probably just another among many with a decent education and nothing to his name.

"Sir, this is the kitchen. If you will go to the dining room, we can bring a ration," one of the Nuns said after a moment's hesitation.

"My thanks, milady, yet it is not my purpose here," the guy replied. "I have felled a deer and used its bounty to feed some transients in that area, though I have not used all the proceeds. I offer this establishment the remainder, if you so wish."

All actions in the room ended for a moment. The Nuns were used to receiving partially-full crates from the vendors, leftovers from days past from the restaurants. In the days before the war came to Sao Paulo, they would routinely receive more from even plain civilians, but nothing comparable to such an offer had happened in recent memory of the staff.

"We would welcome the donation, wanderer," the Father answered for them all. He entered the room from the dining hall. "Do you need assistance carrying it?"

"It is shortly outside and north of here, Father," the nomad waved the priest to the door, who followed. Katy followed partially out of curiosity, partially because her stout frame could lift just as much as the scrawny Father could and half more.

"How did you bring down a deer? Gun?" the Father asked.

"It wandered under a tree I was resting in," the nomad said. "I fell upon it with blade and struck lucky. It collapsed under me and did not even breathe hard before it expired."

"At the least, it was a merciful end," the Father said. "Wow, this is...not deer, it is elk. And a lot of elk at that."

"So long as it is usable to you," the nomad said.

"It is, it most certainly is," the Father admitted.

As the Nomad stepped over it to the head, Katy had a glimpse of a blade in sheath on his hip, revealed as he stretched and the dingy robes came open. It was far longer than most knives, but shorter than Carlos' favored machete. Katy thought she recognized it as some form of ancient military sword, but she did not question it. The three hefted the remnant of the elk and shuffle-carried it into the galley of the Cathedral without issue; in practice, it was not as heavy as it looked to an untrained eye.

The nomad turned to leave, never having removed his hood or requesting anything of the staff. "You will not stay for a meal, good sir?" the Father asked.

"I have had my load for a day," the nomad replied after a moment.

"_Vaya con Dios_, good sir," the Father said.

"If God will suffer my company, I intend it," the Nomad said on his way out the door.

"Did you see his sword?" Katy asked after a moment.

"Gladius," the Father replied, putting name to the blade Katy thought she recognized. The Father was trained by Jesuits, and maintained their reputation for not being stupid in the slightest. "A Roman battle sword. Only, that wasn't a mockup or a reproduction, that looked like the real deal." It made sense that he could identify it, since he had been closer to the nomad than Katy dared approach, and a Jesuit's classical education would certainly cover the arms of the Roman Legion.

"A Roman Legionnaire?" Katy asked, incredulous. "Here? That's preposterous!"

The Father grabbed the thick chest hide of the elk and turned it a quarter-turn clockwise, to face the back and neck of the deer toward Katy. "Preposterous, yes, true, maybe." In the neck of the elk, just above the shoulder blades, was a diamond-shaped puncture that had crusted over with blood; the two-inch blade had sunk down into its chest between the shoulders and severed the spine on the way down. "He may be Legion, he may not be Legion, but he certainly knows how to use that sword."

-x-x-x-

(15 December 2040, 1600 Hours)

Eric had migrated to the southern half of town. Though his actions in the northeast sector were ambiguous enough to the point that no reasonable man or woman would ever suspect him, his operational sense was screaming for him to move elsewhere and continue the abattoir for a new crowd and new victims.

With some research, Eric had understood why the Imperial Japanese considered this a good day to celebrate. December 15 was the day America officially surrendered to the Imperial Japanese, the day when the militaristic and industrial giant of 'the free world' was finally smashed by the 'Honorable Empire of the Rising Sun'. Of course, it took the depopulation of nearly two thirds the civilians in said country to make it even possible, as well as mass-destructive attacks against its military bases and forces, but Eric did not waste thought nor pity on such actions. A properly-trained Mage was as much a weapon of mass destruction as the chemical and nuclear arms so decried by the 'free world' and its denizens. The only difference lay in how such destruction was controlled and unleashed, and how discriminate they were applied.

A month upon the planet had not thus far taught him the edifice of such methods of mass destruction, but Eric had little doubt they worked as advertised. An abandoned south-side slum house made a good workshop for his magic study, and within three days of compressed time he was able to produce a modification to his Enhancer Ring that protected him from poisons and gases. The physical damage such weapons caused would still be lethal, but the chemical effects would not.

And today would be a good day for a parade, as far as Eric was concerned. The skies were gray and some minor hints of lightning in the distance rumbled through the air but made no threat of striking nearby. Eric knew he would be pushing his luck to strike down another officer of their ranks today, but the risk was always minimal. Magic didn't exist on this planet, and nobody would actually believe that someone could do a percentage of what Eric did.

Hundreds of faux supporters had come out to cheer on the procession; Eric knew they were false supporters from their grumbling and lack of proper enthusiasm that would be unnoticeable from ten paces. Just as much as the fake supporters, actual supporters and citizens of Japan came out to cheer on the military, and specifically cheer on Gensui Taisho (Marshall) Akito Yamamoto, the mastermind and commanding officer of the South American invasion and occupation forces. A descendant of the naval mastermind Isoroku Yamamoto, he had taken his grandfather's successful reservations to heart when planning the invasion of first North America and later South America. The body counts had been horrific, even to the Imperial Japanese, but such was the price of their orders as far as Eric could judge.

More to the point, Eric could sense in Akito's method a quiet reservation and a restrained hand. Though Akito's own katana had tasted local flesh on more than one occasion, it drew the blood of errant Japanese and even one particularly offensive Nazi more frequently than it did the locals. Such actions echoed the operational style of Durgan, despite the implied racism, and for that Eric could not fault the Taisho. It would be the subordinates that paid in blood, unless Eric found true cause to bleed Akito he would not do so; any replacement at such a high level was likely to be even more vicious and unrestrained than the veiled blessing he now matched force-on-force unwittingly against.

The remainder of his staff, however, could stand a little bit of a lesson, Eric considered. He figured Akito Yamamoto may know the definition of restraint, but his subordinates would require having it drilled into them.

Once again, the Mage was huddled into a formless lump in the shadows, this time in the front stairwell of an apartment building, awaiting the perfect time to strike. The Marshal (Gensui Taisho) was one of the first officers to pass by where Eric sat, his wife and two daughters in the official staff car as a humanizing gesture that appeared mildly effective. A column of infantry, a column of cavalry, a pair of armored fighting vehicles passed by, followed by another staff car. Eric let this one pass, as its targets were ambiguous and likely were merely businessmen, not politicians. Another column of infantry, this time some of their better-equipped and -trained Honor Guard personnel, followed by a detachment of Waffen-SS Infantry.

Eric let the SS go unhindered for a day, intent on dropping his strike on the next major officer of the Imperial Japanese that crossed in front of him. He was not disappointed the chance, as the next vehicle around the bend in the road had an enemy officer within, and the scowls from the dissenters in the crowd told enough tale to the Durgan expatriate.

-x-

"That him?" 'Deadeye' Whitman asked, her rifle sights tracing the Chusa (Lieutenant Colonel) as his vehicle approached.

"Oh yeah," Anita replied from behind and slightly to her right. The spotting scope she used was a gift from the armor techs, a useful addition to her usually following Nicole 'Deadeye' Whitman around; with the scope, she could better identify targets and plan the creative ways into or out of operations and ambushes. Alone the scope did her no good, as Anita had no talents whatsoever for ranged combat, but when paired with Nicole's sharp aim her wild instincts for the battle could do wonders.

"Best shot?" Nicole asked after a moment.

"Thirty seconds, about when his vehicle pulls even with the mailbox on the corner," Anita answered. "We bug out downstairs, the basement has a clean drainage access for us. Thirty seconds maximum from trigger pull."

They had set up a classic urban sniper hide as trained by their Green Beret combat instructor. Three stories up in an apartment building, they had covered the balcony door and windows with white shear curtains to prevent anyone seeing into the room. The furniture had been rearranged to give them the best possible seating and brace for the eventual shot. Their gear was packed up and ready to go – Anita and Nicole both packed light for most urban missions, mainly due to the necessity of fleeing rather than fighting.

"Not the first time I've gone down a trash chute to avoid capture," Nicole said with a hint of resignation. Every time she did so, however, she did nothing but bathe for three days straight. Some things just squicked her out to no end, and having to go down a trash bin was one of them.

"Twenty seconds," Anita said.

Nicole brought up the trigger slack on her modified G4A2Z sniper rifle. There was little doubt the 8mm Rimless round it fired would blow through the Chusa the long way, much less from chest to back. One of the favored pass-times of Death Camp SS was to lay a prisoner on a table with his or her legs spread, aim at their crotch, and take bets on what part of the top of their body the slug exited out of. It was a disgusting pass-time to Nicole, and she made sure to execute the offending SS personnel whenever possible.

"On target," Nicole answered.

The fate of the Chusa fate would forever be etched into their memory, not for how they saw to it, but for what actually happened. Before his vehicle came into the proper position to take the shot, and as both were staring at him through scopes, the Chusa was struck down by a massive lightning bolt from the heavens. Both sniper and spotter squealed when their eyes were flash-blinded by the stroke of lightning, but both switched eyes to see what happened immediately afterward.

"What the hell?" Anita asked after a moment.

"Lightning? How?" Nicole stammered as she blinked tears away from the painful flash-blinding in her right eye.

"Well, he's dead, that's for sure," the spotter commented dryly, watching the headless body twitch and spasm in the back of the staff car. "Lightning must have struck him square in the forehead."

"It did," Nicole confirmed, having clearly remembered that much about the strike.

"We're done here, our target is dead, even if it wasn't our rifle that did it," Anita concluded.

"Stairs down? They won't look in here for the source of lightning, after all," Nicole opined.

"Works for me, and less time in the bath afterward," Anita said.

Neither sniper nor spotter noticed the grungy robed guy stand up from the stairwell in the apartment building across the street.

-x-x-x-

(22 December 2040, 0900 Hours)

Three knocks at the door drew Oberstgruppenführer (General) Heinrich Von Stauffenberg out of his morning reverie. "Enter," he ordered in his native language, German.

"Morning, sir," Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Maximilian ('Mad Max') Rudelt said gruffly as the door swung closed behind him.

"Max, how goes it?" Heinrich asked with a bit of levity.

"Could be better, old man," the Captain said with an ironic tone. They had gone through tank school together and were roughly the same age, but where Max topped out as a Captain of armor, Heinrich kept going up in SS ranks, half on his family's influence and half on his own merits. When alone, they dropped the bulk of the formality required their disparate ranks.

"What's wrong?" Heinrich asked, puzzled by the soured tone of his old comrade.

"Well, I have a few you probably won't like to hear. Where do I start, home or here?"

"Home," Heinrich said warily.

"Well, first, you've been asked to cough up another seven regiments of regulars for the coming campaign into Russia, with an expected return of two greenhorn regiments to fill the gap."

"Fuck," the Oberstgruppenführer deflated immediately. He was having some serious problems with rebels in South America, especially with the leftover United States Special Forces still on the loose in Brazil and Argentina, and he needed the regulars to deal with them. He didn't have time to train in greenhorns when the SEALs and Green Berets would go through them like a chainsaw shredding saplings. "Recommendation?"

"Call the Reichsführer-SS and tell that Bohemian bastard to what radius he should get bent," Max replied immediately, referring to the Marshall of the SS, Heinrich's direct superior and the second-in-command of the entire Reich below Chancellor Constantine Hitler.

"I foresee that ending well," Heinrich groused drolly. He did not get along with the Reichsführer-SS under any circumstance, and considered it a significant job perk to be in Brazil getting shot at by Rebels, as opposed to being within 100 nautical miles of said officer-and-an-asshole.

"Seriously, it doesn't matter what seven you send, we're screwed any way you cut it. My only advice is don't send the 338 Regiment, I need them exactly where they are right now."

"338 Regiment? Sao Paulo?" Heinrich asked, indirectly requesting clarification.

"I have a gut feeling that something is going real bad in Sao Paulo, and we'll need some serious soldiers there to 'take care of business' when we find out what it is," Max answered, using an American euphemism they both found particularly apt to their line of work.

"Okay, I'll work out what units to send that will screw the continent the least," Von Stauffenberg conceded. "Next?"

"The Standing Armor project that looks real sexy, know it?"

"Yeah, I could use a few companies of 'em around here, lots of mountains to work in, hiding lots of rebels that want us dead."

"It'll keep looking sexy in blueprint, old man, the physical project just took a serious setback," Max groused in frustrated tones. "Two of the lead researchers for the fusion plants woke up with blade-opened windpipes last week. Without those fusion plants, you're back to diesel, and those things are going to cause problems."

"I'm not sure which would be worse," Heinrich Von Stauffenberg stated plainly. "A fusion plant which will cook the entire unit if breached, or a diesel plant that will only burn the crew alive in a matter of seconds." He neither mentioned the mass of the fusion plants, which were not small by anyone's definition, nor did he mention the necessity of diesel logistics for a conventionally-powered armored walking tank unit.

"Frankly, sir, both options suck, and either would be a large target," Max said. "Give me a Tiger Seven over this walking fire magnet any day."

"Agreed," The Oberstgruppenführer nodded twice. "What else from out and about?"

"More guerrilla raids, up five percent from last week," the Hauptsturmführer reported with about as much gusto as he would report a rainstorm forecast.

"Typical, the growth is probably closer to fifteen percent, not five," Heinrich indirectly called the official reporting bullshit.

"Well, getting into local incidents, you may be right," Max said.

"Uh, what?" The comment from Max had the senior officer thoroughly confused.

"Well, we have three problems local, and a point of interest. First problem, by confirmed incidents Sao Paulo is up ten percent, possibly twelve if you consider one incident an incident and not a freak accident," Max read off his notepad.

"The two Hauptsturmführer and a Untersturmführer (Lieutenant), the weird Kubelwagen explosion?"

"Yeah, that one," Max flipped pages in his notes. "We got the lab results back from Konigsberg, they went down to the level of Scanning Electron Microscope and couldn't find a trace of explosive anywhere on the vehicle. It's like God just pointed his finger at that car and said, 'you're dead, bitches,' and that was that."

"You have been spending too much time in New York, young man," Heinrich chided the junior officer with a wagging finger. "No explosives, no evidence of sabotage, nothing," he deflated once again. "Of all the 30s and 40s equipment the Reich has made, the Kubelwagen wasn't exactly famous for spontaneous explosions. It makes no sense."

"I know, but nobody has a better explanation, man. Nobody."

"And then there are the high-profile incidents the Japanese have suffered in past weeks," The senior officer mused. "It really does sound like, oh, God has a hard-on for us?" he opined as something of a joke.

"Could be," Max agreed. "And those lightning strikes are just more evidence, as well as incident three of four."

"And that leaves only the strange one you mentioned," Heinrich prompted.

Max puffed his cheeks, then blew out a gusty sigh. "We may have a cell in northwest Sao Paulo. Only thing is, it isn't acting like any normal guerrilla cell I can recall. It's almost like they're more concerned with hiding than resisting."

"What makes you think so?" Von Stauffenberg asked. If anything, the SS had to give credit to the South American resistance forces for being incredibly tenacious bastards. Part of that tenacity was also in the fact that they operated both loud and hard, and only hid when they weren't operating. It made finding them about half easier than cells in the rest of the world, and made them twice more difficult to ferret out and kill.

"If anything, they only have a few incidents to their record, and that is supposition on our part. We can't finger them directly for anything, just the assumption that if there is a cell in the area, there are enough inconsistencies with other known cells that it may be their handiwork and not who we thought it was initially. If that line of logic is true, these guys are both lethal operators and masters of stealth."

"Great," and once more the Oberstgruppenführer deflated. "Just what I need, some ultra-clever resistance bastards. Why, oh why cannot God just grant us our requests for ridiculous enemies?"

Max snorted famously. "Because we're the SS, old man. Schutzstaffel**, **Screwed Sideways, Stomped Shitless, Sexed Senseless, take your pick."

"Only one of those sounds any amount of fun, and that if I was thirty years younger," Heinrich replied, to which both officers shared a hearty laugh.

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence...)

It was their age that mostly earned them a free pass. Triplets, all three having survived to the age of twenty, was rare enough to warrant solicitude from just about everyone they came into contact with. In lands continually suffering border skirmishes for over a century, anyone surviving to thirty was considered exceptional, and twins or triplets surviving intact at all was almost miraculous. Some even considered it proof of the existence of God in these trying times.

Their beauty was of the 'exotic' class in the area they had come to, which granted them the remainder of their free pass and accolades. The environs were most truly pan-Europa as far as they could tell, closer to Northlands than the Mediterranean coasts, and the slightly darker appearance of the Trio was enough to attract eyes.

Even still, the Trio moved in silence and without demand, just as humble as the average citizen and just as reserved. Gone were the days of wearing light clothing and robes for combat practice, gone were the days of spellcraft solutions to all the problems they could apply it to. Human wizards were few and far between in these lands, a fact they had not taken long to understand, and they did not want to press their luck on such matters.

It would be their relative silence that became their greatest weapon.

"I hear a dragon savages the towns to the north, in the old Westphalen lands," a bar patron said loudly. "And all our Paladin on the southern border, locked in mortal combat with the Elves."

"Aye, I have seen it at great distance," another patron said. "It is an ancient, a massive Red. Torches whole acres of farms in one breath, whole villages with a fart."

"Our last accomplished Dragonslayer was done in by the Sylves, a decade ago," the barkeep interjected. "A crying pity, the wind warriors, he could not strike one down in their motions. They could not hurt him by spell, his armor was too great, but they ran him ragged until he collapsed of exhaustion and was knifed through the eyeslits."

"What that we had a decent Dragonslayer guild, such as the Eastern Reaches do," the first patron groused.

"Think you what I do?" Diana asked her sisters.

"I think so," Kiona said.

"It will be extremely dangerous," Mikka cautioned.

"It will also be of extensive profit," Diana countered. "And, as we down such creatures, we can use them as material for ever-increasingly-powerful equipment."

"A pair of daggers, made of dragon horn?" Mikka asked.

"A shield fashioned of their scales, just as much," Kiona thought aloud. "And the obvious benefits to their other materials. Dragon blood ink for rune inscriptions? Dragon bone staves for spells and relics?"

"We will need to plan accordingly," Diana settled the matter. They would do it, and they would become famous for it. Fame was the one thing the Atrebas family had, at least until other parties thought they were annihilated...

"We will need a primary operations plan, a secondary operations plan, and a rapid escape route if it becomes untenable."

"Primary, a blade sufficient to pierce dragon hide and bone. I am thinking a relic broadsword, something to penetrate the skull and seize the brain. What say you?" Kiona asked.

"Secondary, we can strike the foe with asymmetrical magic attacks," Mikka interjected. "A pike would be just as good for penetrating hide and bone, allows for greater standoff range," she adjusted the prior idea.

"A pike it is," Diana said. "A pity we do not have our brother's skills with Force Magic, though."

"That would be an assured kill, but it would destroy as much as it would kill," Kiona reminded them. "Force magic annihilates everything, never forget."

"Aye, that it does," Mikka admitted. "Escape plans?"

"Foot would be no good, any beast that large can assuredly chase us down in a short breath's time," Diana opined. "Teleportation would be the only real option."

"Then we will need to verify our pre-chants of the Teleport spell before we begin," Kiona said. "We are in agreement?"

"We are," Mikka said.

"We shall," Diana concluded.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

I will be forth in saying that the preparation for this chapter was easily one of the hardest things I have ever done as a writer. The Nazis got their assess whooped in real life, and deservedly so. Figuring out a plausible way by which they could win World War 2 is literally so unnatural a thought that every part of me rebelled against the thought even despite the consideration that I know exactly how this will end. Conventional wisdom says that the Nazis and IJA lost, and that they should always lose given their policies, but the theory I have put forth dictates that somewhere the will not lose.

A major problem is this story is NOT rubber band history, and things will not mystically bounce back to 'normal' in the course of this story. Real life does not act like a rubber band, and once the cord is severed it will flail in a different direction, not snap back to what the world would think it is supposed to look like. Too much blood, too many bodies are in the wake of the front lines to simply bounce back to normalcy. Anyone who reads Harry Turtledove knows that history does not operate on a rubber band, what is changed cannot be shoehorned into a common expectation. More simply stated, **Status Quo is NOT God**, and the parallel universes **WILL** alternate when the history varies.

And, then comes the major problem of the story arc: what the hell can one wizard do to stop an entire Empire of Nazis? The answer to this question is the crux of the coming chapters, and therein lies the foundation of supreme conflict. There will be blood, chief among them Eric's blood as was splattered in this chapter. This will be a long, drawn-out conflict like you have never seen. The rebels shown in place are only part of it, and there will be many more to come in coming chapters. Just as you can expect to see plenty of Nazi atrocity in coming chapters.

Also, pay attention to the semi-naievete that Eric is operating under in this chapter, in pertaining to his intended actions. It may seem out of character at first, but it does make sense in the context of his prior residence. Eric expects that the ability to sway a land – specifically referring to a City-State or small prefecture – is scalable to the monster nightmare he now lives in. The problem is, the sheer size of the power vacuum he intends to create cannot be reliably managed by one man, and there will be people in the silence thereafter willing to take advantage of this fact. Look upon ye possibilities and tremble, for Eric is building his own worst-case scenario.

Well, in terms of development cycle, this one was out to Beta some time between Christmas and New Years. It took a while to clear through the beta process, though, which is what I intend. I have beta assistance to make sure this is done right, not particularly fast. And trust me on this if nothing else about the chapter, doing it right in this case was worth it; were I to have gone as originally intended, I would have been in for a firestorm now and a rewrite of the Jokers wild rewrite in the future.

Not that I don't expect some flame for the contents of this chapter to begin with.

As I explained to my special assistant for this chapter, **Alex Yamato**, the Nazis and IJA are operating on the 'hellishly smart Axis' axiom. Simply stated, Hitler had several options to basically un-fuck his war effort, and he blew just about every one of them. Some of the high points will be listed below the Spell Library, for anyone who wants to understand how the Nazis and IJA did it so right they took over all of the world except the Soviet Union.

NOTICE: THE LIST BELOW IS NOT ALL-INCLUSIVE. If you have ideas to add to the list, I want to hear them.

All things considered, this is stretching it a bit thin, but by my own principles that govern this story (and the Jokers Wild), it is possible. Probable? No. Possible? Yes. This is where the infinite numeric possibilities theorem comes into play, as written in the chapter foreword. I expect and welcome your comments on the listed parts below.

That is all I am going to say for this chapter. There will be more, and I detect that there will be much discussion about the plausibility of this scenario to come.

NEXT UP: Eric continues to depopulate the IJA and Nazi ranks, prompting significant responses from both parties in both expected and unexpected fashions. The complex equation of interlocking nightmares continues...

* * *

Review Replies:

Three replies from the last chapter. Not unexpected, the last chapter was less action and more along the lines of plot / character intro.

**Alex Yamato**: First off, I would like to thank you for the assistance on the characters. Though I couldn't use the original concepts directly, with some mod they fall into place nicely.

Your guesses as to where everyone is shall only be vindicated, mainly because you left the guessing vague. The detail work is what will set the conflicts in motion for Sets 3 to 8 of the MMC, and by extension build the base of the conflict for the Jokers Wild.

**Necroblade**: Thank you for the Beta fix, amigo. I should have caught that logic fault early on in the dev process.

On the Greeks tracing the Atrebas family, under most spells for cross-dimensional travel it is possible to find them, but not all. The Fates would know exactly how to make the transfer without being able to trace them, that is **if** the Gods want to be directly involved. The low-level Priests would not have the ability to make such traces, but you can rest assured that escape does not resolve this conflict in any fashion.

Well, we went over what it takes to become a Divinity under my system, so I'll drop the short version here: Eric is FAR from becoming any form of a God, and were he to go head-to-head with pretty much any Demigod he would barely last a minute in direct combat at the moment. This being said, it is not an impossible task to become one, just incredibly difficult and time-consuming. It will be a major point in chapters to come, trust me.

The Good and Bad argument I dropped in makes for a great philosophy argument, as well as opens up whole new worlds of possibility for the adroit spellcaster. It is all in how the spells are used, not just what spells are used.

**MantaArms1989**: Close on the Vorpal guess, but I already answered that for you, so I won't spoil it for the other readers. The answer will definitely be revealed in Set 2 of the Jokers Wild, so...

As to where Eric landed, yes and no. Yes, it is Nazi, no, it is not Germany. It is Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is a really twisted history, where the Nazis won WW2 and subsequent campaigns. Where Eric treads, he will see depredations that are horrific beyond all compare.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet:

No real gripes for the last chapter.

A major THANK YOU is due to my two assistants for this chapter, **Alex Yamato** and **Necroblade**, and you can rest assured their services are on retainer for coming chapters.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): A bit of Nazi symbology: the swastika now infamous the world over is a variation of an ancient symbol for luck.

(2): Grosse is a reference to the 'bosses' Hans Grosse and Trans Grosse from the original Wolfenstein 3-D. See Included Works entry for details.

(3): Spanish, roughly translates to foot soldier.

* * *

Included Works:

REAL LIFE

—Sao Paulo, Brazil: being the main setting for this chapter, though the absolute most I can derive for details is what it looks like in Mapquest maps. That being said, see below for the alternate history concerns.

—Real world history, until certain breakpoints ranging from 1922 to 1942 where events changed from our recognized history. Again, see below for alternate history changes.

REAL LIFE ALTERNATE HISTORY

—Sao Paulo alternate: The evolution of Sao Paulo, being a wildly different history it has suffered, is structured and populated extremely different from normal. This is due in no small part to the societal changes brought on by the changes elsewhere in the world.

—World War II Alternate: Though multiple breakpoints occurred prior, the major notable changes occur in the area of this war. The main consideration is that the Axis powers were running in what could be called 'Hellishly Smart Axis' mode, ergo they did not blow the Battle of Britain, they did not attack Russia or the United States (at least not until well after they had conquered Europe and made sure to secure oil resources early on to prevent cutoff from the major players). By using a systematic operations plan of conquering one territory at a time and acting in direct concert with their allies, the Imperial Japanese and Nazis were able to eventually overrun most of the world, though such conquest took almost 90 years to complete and some seriously horrific combat methods. As of this chapter, the only free nation on planet is Soviet Russia.

BOARD GAMES

—Dungeons and Dragons First Edition: The spell _**Lightning Bolt**_ is a derivation of the spell Lightning Bolt, only rather than be generated from the caster's finger it is normally a cloud-to-target-to-earth spell. See Spell Registry for details.

ORIGINAL WORKS

—The song shown about a third into this chapter is an original work of mine, and a none-too-subtle jab at the ruling parties on planet. By the same token, most Metal acts are not known for subtlety. If anyone wants to put it to use in another fic or in a band, have at it. Just PM me with where it is used so I can read through or listen.

* * *

Spell Registry:

COMBAT SPELLCRAFT branch

Black Magic subset

—Lightning Bolt: MinDR of 25.000, no material components required, target must be either on a planetoid with an atmosphere or must be in an atmosphere capable of self-conduction of ionizing electric strikes (an example would be cloud-to-cloud lightning). This spell, in its purest form, generates a lightning bolt of massive proportions targeted on what the caster is visually tracking. For each DR of modified casting power the spellcraft user has, the raw power of the bolt is increased by 50,000 watts, resulting in a 1.25 gigawatt strike at the lowest level of power necessary for this spell to take effect. The maximum targeting range for this spell is visual range max, though as the range increases the possibility of visual scatter becomes increasingly likely. It is also not unheard for such objects as fog banks or wind eddies to 'intercept' the lightning strike at significant ranges. This spell also has a separate targeting ability, in that it can be used with a _**Clairvoyance**_ skill (covered under a briefing in Chapter 8), be such a skill psionic, Newtype, or magic, and will target the object beheld by _**Clairvoyance**_ as opposed to what object the caster is physically looking at. In such a case, the range of the Lightning Bolt is limited to one planetary distance (or 75,000 kilometers in absolute distance terms), which is doubled for each rank of Transcendance a caster achieves. LIMITATIONS: If there is a major conducting object within 3 meters lateral distance of the targeted object (such as a lightning rod on the roof of a building, and the absolute ground distance to that lightning rod would be three meters if the lightning rod was at the same height as the targeted object), the spell will strike that conducting object and expend its power there. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of forever with an arc of Lightning**_

—

* * *

This list is PURE EVIL, but it is also the basis upon which the scenario shown here is played out.

The Combined List of THINGS NOT TO DO TO AVOID FUCKING UP WW2:

1 – THE WANKERS IN COMMAND SHOULD ONLY LOOK LIKE THEY ARE IN COMMAND. Simply stated, Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler could lead people with insane amounts of charisma for such scumdogs, but they could not run a proper military campaign without micromanaging it straight to the gates of Hell. This was the loudest and hardest screw-up on both sides of the alliance, in that both made insane and illogical decisions that eventually got themselves killed. The body count was horrendous, but without their royal screwups it would have been far worse for far longer.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: In this continuum, the Nazi side was gamed out by Paulus, Rommel, and Himmler as the true command authority behind Hitler's intentions. In the European theater, this didn't do much to assuage the bloodshed, but it did prevent the colossal fuck-ups from Hitler, Goering, and the political hacks from destroying the effort. On the Imperial Japanese side, General Kuribayashi, Admiral Yamamoto, and Emperor Hirohito himself led the operations. Though Tojo was still the operational figurehead for the hard-liners in command of the military, the establishment recognized the Emperor's will as absolute and his orders were directly promulgated through Tojo or by back-channel through Kuribayashi or Yamamoto.

2 – DO NOT FUCK WITH AMERICA. It is explained in detail below, but bears mentioning here for completeness. In all fairness to the IJA and Nazis of real life, America looked like a very soft target and an easy mission-kill if pushed hard enough, though to truly understand how bad an idea this is you really have to understand American history. Every nation that has hammered on America over the years not only failed to gain a decent victory, but generally ended up losing badly in the ensuing conflict, exceptions being to conflicts after 1960 when America began losing its will to combat. This does not apply to individuals or non-nation organizations (Pancho Villa, Bin Laden, etc) who have better luck against the US than most nations have.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: Did not screw with America, until 2010. Operations began with a massive chemical and nuclear warfare program aimed at disrupting cohesive military and civilian resistance. You can probably guess how well that worked, given that Sao Paulo, Brazil, now belongs to the Nazis and the Green Berets are displaced underground freedom fighters.

The SS List of THINGS NOT TO DO TO AVOID FUCKING UP WW2:

1 – DO NOT WANK AROUND AT DUNKIRK. In Real Life, Rommel's Seventh Armored (The infamous Ghost Division) had the British Expedition Force by the balls, but he was ordered to stop by Hitler to allow the Luftwaffe to 'handle' the retreating British forces. IRL, this ended up not doing much to stop the retreating British.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: In this continuum, Dunkirk was handled by the SS, not by the Luftwaffe. There were a few extracted, but most were killed or captured on the beaches and didn't make it back to Britain. The loss of these personnel would greatly impact the war effort for years to come.

2 – DO NOT PISS ON THE BRITISH CITIES DURING THE BLITZ. The Battle Of Britain was a major hinge-point under which the Luftwaffe could have folded the last air resistance in the European campaign. Near the midpoint of The Blitz, they had the RAF so hard they were within weeks of annihilating the last air forces standing against them. In real life, Hitler screwed it up by changing target patterns halfway through. Oops.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: In this work, he didn't screw it up and change targets, leading to the eventual annihilation of RAF Fighter Command. After '44, the Luftwaffe was largely uncontested in Europe.

3 – DO NOT INVADE MOTHER FUCKING RUSSIA. On most maps of the era, there is this large, imposing edifice to the east of Nazi Germany, commonly called the Soviet Union. IRL, Napoleon tried invading it about a hundred years before Hitler did. Neither attempt worked well. If any one thing in history can be attributed to annihilating the Nazis, and deservedly so, it is generally the Soviets and their taking the brunt of Hitler's fury for 4 years and returning the favor in '44 and '45.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: In this work, Hitler was smart enough to maintain his treaty relations with the Soviet Union and SPECIFICALLY DID NOT INVADE RUSSIA. All things considered, if there are two places on this planet just plain not worth the effort of invading, Siberia and Australia are those two places. The Himalayas and the Amazon Basin are close seconds on that list. Of course, now that the rest of the world belongs to either the Imperial Japanese or the Nazis, a revisit of the Russian front may be on the horizon...

4 – DO NOT PISS OFF AMERICA. At least not until you are in a damn good position to depopulate America and then try it. All things considered, though, this one was not a Nazi failing, it started with the IJA and only went downhill from there. See the IJA section for a little clarification on this one.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: The Nazis went out of their way to avoid killing American personnel wherever possible, especially merchant shipping traffic. Though this ended with the invasion of America, for obvious reasons, it also kept America out of direct involvement in the war effort until America was left with no choice but to stand alone, with wolves on one side and demons on the other.

5 – DO NOT HANG AROUND IN A FUCKING DESERT GETTING YOUR ASS CHEWED OFF BY A BRITISH BULLDOG. This one qualifies as not only strategically unwise, but somewhat humiliating. After Montgomery started stomping Rommel's ass into the sands of North Africa, Hitler should have ordered Rommel to withdraw and return to friendly lines. Instead, the Hitler we all know and despise ordered his vaunted Afrika Korps to stand and die against hopeless odds. Fat lot of good that did him, especially when the allies that annihilated Rommel's boys turned their attention northward to the Italians.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: In this continuity, Rommel was withdrawn long before El-Alamein and had time to refit his forces in Thuringa before heading back for seconds. With British support thinned due to RAF losses and subsequent air superiority given to the Nazis, North Africa became a veritable curbstomp for Rommel when he revisited it in '47, though North Africa would not be officially listed as 'pacified' until Britain itself was invaded and finally capitulated in 1952.

And, this being said, Imperial Japan has their list of THINGS NOT TO DO IN WW2 IN HOPES OF SURVIVING:

1 – DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, PISS OFF CHINA. The great malaise of Japan's IRL war effort was their attempt to invade and suborn a nation about twenty times their size and population, or at least do so more than they had already legitimately won in treaty or by actions started by the Chinese. Now, all things considered, they did give it a good harangue, but if they really wanted to be an imperial power it would have been wiser not to piss off a nation large enough that they could fart in your general direction and capsize your home islands, at least while conducting battle on three other fronts..

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: Japan and China never fought each other directly before the 1950s, in which case it went to a low-level border skirmish between Japan's Manchurian possessions and mainland China. Because of alternating internal pressures and the external campaigns by the Nazis and IJA, the Chinese mainland was never unified under a Communist rule before the South Asia Campaign of the Axis. In a case of 'too little too late', the Chinese attempted to unify under Xian Kun Po, a Chinese ultra-nationalist, but in the face of Nazi Blitzkrieg from the west and the Imperial Japanese chemical warfare to the east, even this action was a hollow reed before the Chinese fall.

2 – DO NOT PISS OFF AMERICA. Again, much like Japan versus China, attacking a nation that is significantly larger than yourself would be considered a very bad idea by all conventional wisdom. More to the point, Admiral Yamamoto (the architect of Pearl Harbor) knew Japan was in for a manhandling if the campaign against America was not done right the first time. This being said, IRL this is exactly what happened: with divided attention, the IJA was unable to focus enough combat power toward either China or America, and was eventually caught between the unyielding ground and the descending anvil. Oops.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: America was not touched in any fashion by the Japanese, and would not engage in trade with Imperial Japan in objection to their use of chemical weapons. It would not be until 2009 that Banner of the Rising Sun would fly over the continental United States, and by that time it was far too late for America to respond in kind. The decision not to attack the United States or outlying possessions was a smart calculation for the Imperial Japanese, as the act of not attacking America left the United States economy in free-fall due to the ongoing Great Depression and subsequent political mismanagement thereof. It would be 1969 before the US recovered to pre-depression strength, by which time the Nazis and IJA were mostly recovered from their initial campaigns.

3 – DO NOT PISS AWAY RESOURCES ON POINTLESS CAMPAIGNS BEFORE SECURING NECESSARY RESOURCES. Japan pissed away a lot of forces and material in areas that are good prestige conquests, but do not strictly assist the nation in curing resource deficiencies or preparing new conquests. Chief among these is the campaign in Australia; while the necessity of operations in the Outback was dictated by the newly-established enmity with the United States and the need to deny safe ports to the US submarine fleets, the continent really does not hold anything else of major value to Imperial Japan.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: The initial operations of the campaign were aimed almost completely at natural resources, chief among these being fuel and metal. Once these resources were secured and processed into the strategic pipeline, Japan began on its 'prestige' campaigns in Oceania – once again, wary to avoid stomping on American territories or shipping. French Indochina, India, and Western Asia / Mideast Asia would be handled later with Nazi assistance, up to and including the use of chemical and nuclear weapons on India and several other nations.

4 – ASSUMED RACIAL SUPERIORITY DOES NOT MAKE UP FOR POPULATION SIZE OR FORCE SIZE. As much as the IJA thought itself completely superior to the rest of the world, the limited force structures and disorganized operational goals crippled its ability to focus power on any one threat at any given time. Fighting a war on 3+ fronts at any given time, for a nation of less than 60 million people, is not a feasible option as history has shown.

STRATEGIC CORRECTION: By limiting both scope of conflict and theaters engaged at any given time, the IJA maximized its limited manpower into rapier-like attack forces capable of soundly defeating all but the most hardened of resistance. This tactic, when complimented by the Nazi Blitzkrieg, allowed the two major Axis powers to overrun most colonial resistance and even some of the regular European-model forces, such as the Australian Infantry or Indian Colonial Infantry. The hallmark of this tactic would be the battles against the United States Armored Divisions in the plains of Kansas and South Dakota, where the understrength and demoralized American tank brigades were unable to counter the lightning-fast maneuvers of the Japanese Land Armor Divisions in massive maneuver battles. Even Rommel's successor was rightly impressed with Japanese tactics to the point of training Manzer Shock Brigades in those tactics.


	8. Desired Blood

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 8: Desired Blood)

Anita had to force herself to stop panicking; where she stood, she could see all manner of Nazi _sturmtruppen_, and even some looking in her direction, but not one apparently saw her. It was the most terrifying experience she could ever recall, even more so for the phobias she held about Nazi 'research labs'.

After a few moments, the curiosity of it overtook her. A few moments observation revealed her environs to be the middle of a Nazi base, a Panzer division base, with all its attendant fields, buildings, and personnel. The sheer scale of such a facility would do naught but overawe even Anita, for the necessities of maintaining such a large force in the field were immense. By the same token, for the Nazis to maintain control over South America, they had to have such forces in place to handle rebellions.

Despite being seen but unseen in a Nazi camp, Anita did not consider her actions or presence to be the strangest thing in the area. To her left rested some of the division's infantry barracks, simple two-story barracks buildings like any other, though even those were mundane and expected. The man in the black robe was not expected as he stood between barracks buildings, also unseen and unheard.

Anita watched calmly, silently, as the man turned to the northern of the two buildings he stood between, put his hand to the wall, and began chanting. The language was grossly unfamiliar, a dialect so strange and unrecognizable that she could not even begin to guess what nation the man came from, although Anita suspected he was beholden to no nation in the classic sense of the word. The chanting continued for over a minute, whatever he was doing or saying took quite a while and required a lengthy invocation to complete.

When he removed his hand from the wall of the structure, whatever he had prepared began. The walls of the structure started glowing, a faint cobalt blue akin to stained glass seen in the few remaining cathedrals around the world. Within seconds, screaming could be heard inside the barracks building thus afflicted, the screeches of agony and torture of severe pain, then more screaming as the blue gained in intensity and brightness, though the screaming did not last for more than ten seconds overall.

By now Anita could tell the blue glow had drawn attention from just about everyone on base. Some dropped tools, weapons, and instinctively ran away from it. Others simply stared, but the bulk of viewers simply looked on and muttered prayers to whatever God or Goddess first popped into mind. Anita figured all of the above would result in the same fate.

The blue glow overwhelmed the structure, the radiant light began eating away at it with a rapidly accelerating pace. The structure began folding in on itself as the inner supports were consumed by the light, no longer structurally sound and no longer able to resist giving in. The material of the roof collapsed into an oblate blue shell at ground level; the material never touched the ground, it simply disappeared into the nightmarish horror now sitting where a filled barracks once existed.

More soldiers began running, but Anita knew this was not the worst of the horror show to come. The man in the robes stood silently and watched as his creation began expanding radially, outward more than upward, and with each meter of gain the pace it expanded increased a bit. With each object consumed by the shell, the pace increased significantly, as if the material of Existence fed a reaction that expanded its girth. The shell began to consume the outer walls of adjacent barracks facilities; this time, the troopers inside did not have the luxury of screams or agony, they were simply consumed and annihilated by the ever-expanding shell.

Anita wanted to move away, but physically she could not. The shell inched up to her in due course, the cobalt energy washing around her and giving her a weird feeling of ennui, of physical and mental calm. Unlike the others, she was not harmed in any fashion by the energy; in fact, she felt the energy went a way to healing and helping her, as opposed to annihilating her. She simply watched as the luminescent shell continued expanding around her, increasing in pace as it consumed more and more material and buildings and personnel.

Of interesting note, the Panzer VII tanks were not completely consumed by the attack. Granted, each of them had lost a random and significant amount of its material and structure, but enough of the tanks remained that you could tell it was once a tank, but a tank in far worse shape than even when they were burned out. The Kubelwagens did not survive, the Nazi halftracks did not survive, their limited helicopter craft were assuredly annihilated beyond all trace. Personnel shrieked as parts of their bodies were consumed, but at the pace of expansion those shrieks became shorter and shorter with each passing second. Everywhere around her, the sound of rushing air similar to the vacuum around a firestorm echoed through, adding an eerie accompaniment to the sound of the wailing damned and their dying screeches.

Eventually, the shell consumed the entire base and began eating into the forest around the base. It was at this time that the man in robes snapped his fingers and the all-consuming shell burst, showering the area with further cobalt-blue particulate. For a moment, Anita thought the only remaining souls in what was once a base of 30,000 personnel was now a creepy robed guy and herself.

"_LIEBER GOTT_! WHAT HAPPENED?" A single voice cried from the area that was once a barracks building not far northeast from the initial target building. The speaker was just as close to Anita as the robed one was to her, though this changed as they moved toward each other. "You! Who are you? What happened?"

"Another who is resistant to the radiance," the man under the robes said. His voice was haunting in the sudden silence of the former base, though preternaturally calm and collected in stark contrast to the panicking Nazi.

"What happened? Tell me!" the Nazi said, grabbing the lapels of the black robe and shaking it. "Tell me! Are they all dead?"

"What that you were not a Nazi, there would be an honored place for you," the man in robes said simply.

"_Mein Gott! MEIN GOTT_!" The Nazi released the grip he had on the robe, took a step backwards, and stumbled. "You—you! You! NO!"

The man in the robes drew a pistol from his waistband, an old 1911 with worn finish, and dropped the thumb safety with a practiced flair. Without a further word, a single shot was loosed into the one surviving Nazi among a whole division. The crack of the gunshot, the sound of a soggy slapping, the sight of the soldier's rear skull exploding in a trauma-induced pink puff, engendered a jolt and panic reaction in Anita.

-x-

(28 December 2040, 0020 Hours)

The panic reaction and jolt translated to her physical form, as she startled awake in her bed with a massive fright and a racing heart. Involuntarily she catapulted up in bed and stopped, now sitting straight up and looking at the opposite wall from her bed.

She was silent for a few moments, simply gripping the top of her blanket as her body burned off the adrenaline and panic inherent to the strange dream. She would not venture to categorize it a nightmare, based on the fact that her earliest memories of life were nightmares and this dream was vengeance grand mal compared to the abuses of the Nazi genetic research labs. Still and all, the visceral physical reactions to the dream were as much akin to a real nightmare as possible.

It was always the same, but never did it occur two nights in a row. Every third night, starting around 10 November (two months ago), the dream would repeat. It was always the same, always the same screams, always the same sole survivor, always the same gunshot that awoke her. She was surprised that it still startled her to that extent, even two months later.

"The same nightmare again?" Nicole asked from the other bed in the room, which immediately set Anita's heart to racing and caused another panic jolt.

"No, no, not the nightmare, not the exploratory surgery when I was awake," Anita replied evenly. She had been strapped to an operating table not long before she had been extracted from the testing lab she was born in, then 'explored' while fully awake. She still had scars from such trauma all up and down her sides, but she also had her first truly fond memory when Tabitha had blown the head off the 'doctor' that had done so with a shotgun. It was messy beyond all compare, and unlike the other personnel his body had been left in open air to be dealt with by vultures, but it was her first truly good memory in her life.

"What was it?"

Anita was silent for almost a minute before she answered. Nicole waited for it, since she knew Anita wasn't always the best with words among the unit, but nobody could deny her heart or her instincts were rival to any two in the rebellion. Such was what Nicole liked best about her partner/spotter/CQB guardian, above and beyond her other idiosyncrasies.

"It was vengeance," Anita answered. "A blue vengeance, deeper than a dark daylight sky of blue, and far more destructive than nuclear weapons. Vengeance, eats everything in its path. Frightening vengeance," and with the last she shuddered involuntarily, remembering the haunting screams and the creepy blue glow.

"Vengeance," Nicole replied. "Interesting."

"Believe me?"

"Of course, but I'm not sure what to think about it. Will you show it to me sometime?"

"I will, but not tonight," she replied. Anita had just barely enough telepathic talent to show Nicole – an otherwise mundane lady in her own right – her most powerful dreams. Of course, the two kid psionics in the unit could help translate the dream from Anita's memories to Nicole's consciousness, but Anita considered that cheating.

-x-x-x-

(30 December 2040, 0430 Hours)

(Southern Sao Paulo, Riverbank Slums area)

Eric's ability to skulk back and forth across the reaches of the city, seen but unseen, heard but unheard, made a perfect mobility option for his quest to depopulate the city of Nazis and IJA. Most of his movement was after dark, where vehicular and civilian traffic was reduced. This allowed him to better avoid any accidents with the vehicles and to better avoid detection by observant enemies. When daylight broke, he usually hunkered down and waited for an opportune target to come by before he struck in one fashion or another. Never were the attacks done more than once every few days, nor were attacks done in the same fashion every time, forcing them to blame either freak accidents or the hand of god, or sometimes both at once.

The simple fact that rebellion was alive and well pretty much globally was very heartening to the transplanted wizard; that he was not working alone, even if he was operating alone and unsupported, was as much a morale booster as the sight of the deceased Nazis. There existed a plurality of rebellion cells in the Sao Paulo area alone, and global rebellion forces made the news on these 'television' reports with both daily frequency and frightening alacrity. Eric had to grudgingly admit that his actions were borderline insignificant in terms of volume and size of operations when compared to other rebellion forces. One of the major things he could do with impunity was target officers, something to which most rebellion personnel could not claim.

It was the southeast areas of the Sao Paulo metropolitan area that turned out to be the best hiding places for Eric, as well as his new semi-residence while he struck out at targets throughout the city. Down by the river, the city itself was far less upscale and inviting than the downtown Sao Paulo areas. The density of structures was extremely high in the poor areas, to the point that a mere hundred paces walk would routinely take one past over a dozen houses crowded together. In the days of Nazi population control, most of these structures were empty, with but a few destitute individuals or families residing within; the lack of tenants made it perfect for Eric, as he could simply pick a structure that was not too badly degraded and use it for a base of operations.

The interesting part was, as always, the people in the area. To Eric, one set of structures was no more or less significant than the next, mainly on the fact that they all had the same characteristics of industrial process and material. It was the inhabitants that made the land, shaped and interacted with it. And it was the inhabitants that truly brought the mysteries and entertainment to Eric's life like no other.

Eric entered his chosen structure by way of the rear door to the building, since the front was boarded up and he wanted it kept that way. Without ready front access to the building he was inside, the likelihood that Nazis would invade while he was doing something was close to nil. Of course, since the 'ownership' of such structures was very thoroughly muddled, anyone could (and did) come and go as they pleased. Eric was no different among such crowds, but even he was subject to being surprised on such a note.

Despite his sometimes ponderous movements, Eric moved slowly and smoothly even in the comfort of his own 'base' and 'home'. It was this semi-stealth that allowed him to approach a pair of persons in his sleeping quarters. Eric managed to even sit down on the rickety old chair in the room without disturbing them, which surprised Eric significantly. The two ladies in his sleeping sack were young, and Eric would have figured they would be disturbed by any noise in their environs.

Rather than rousing the sleepers, Eric decided that some book study was in order. Without any words, Eric accessed his library and pulled a book on advanced rune magic. Even the minor change in light in the room had not disturbed the sleepers, though the candle Eric used to light his reading drew a moan from the one with blond hair among the pair. Further study on the matters of trap runes and their preparation engrossed the Mage for hours. The methods by which he operated may be visually suspect, especially if using some form of visual marker for the trap, but there were ways to conceal a Rune even in these environs without breaking the magic sealed within.

As the exterior light faded, Eric added another candle, then a third to see properly. The libraries he had worked with when training were always lit with magically-radiant fixtures, though out in the field light was a relatively difficult thing to come by outside of daylight. While any of his magicked swords would have been optimal for the task, the presence of the two ladies would have made the use of a radiant sword for light to be folly of the highest order.

It was only a few hours before one of the guests stirred. Her rousing was mostly silent, enough so that Eric only barely noticed over the din of noise elsewhere in the area, though when she stood Eric could tell she was not really trained to be stealthy. Eric decided that a backwards introduction would be in order, to disarm a potential blowup before it began.

"If you seek the chamber pot, it is in the room to your left," Eric said quietly, still looking down at the book he was reading.

"Know where it is," she muttered before she began trudging in that direction. Eric had given her only a sideways glance, given that the clothing she was wearing only barely covered her nether and her bust. Eric flipped his page as she entered the room, though he said nothing and simply continued reading as she relieved herself. The sound of a water blast was something unexpected to Eric, though he did not flinch when he heard it.

When she exited the room, Eric was still reading and still unmoved. "Does it require emptying yet?"

"I used the toilet," she said somewhat blearily. "Now, what are you doing here?"

"This has been my residence for some days," Eric said before he set a bookmark on the page he was reading through. The book went into a drop pouch on the outside of his main gearpack, which he noted had been rifled through but his primary gear – his swords and higher magic books – had not been disturbed. "I would ask you what drew you to this residence overnight?"

Eric was surprised when the lady simply walked up to the table and took a seat opposite Eric. "I've been bouncing from house to house for so long, I can feel which ones are right and which ones are trouble." She made a motion to try and look at the book Eric had been reading, but he had concealed it well enough to not be seen. "What were you reading?"

Eric decided an artful dodge was in order. A technique he had seen in action around town: "A study book for my business ventures," Eric replied for a moment.

"What's your trade?" she requested in immediate follow-up.

"Solving problems on a large scale," Eric semi-dodged once more. "Now, may I ask my next?"

"Sure," despite the positive answer, Eric could detect the hint of not particularly liking being questioned in her voice. Eric filed the fact away for future reference, lest he push his luck with other ladies.

"The lady still asleep, what is your relation with her?" Eric asked.

"We're, well, err, I don't want to answer that," she admitted after a moment.

"A direct dodge," Eric replied; the lady tensed, as if expecting to be hit for it. "If you concern over my reaction to such, you may rest assured I do not hold such relations against people. I have two sisters who follow the same tenets, and I did not act against."

She was silent for a moment. "It is that obvious?"

"The method to which you were embraced beneath the covers, and your amount of dress when you exited, bespeaks a more-than-platonic relationship," Eric answered. The lady flushed briefly, reminded that she wasn't wearing much in the way of clothing in front of a strange man. "My other question, before I yield the floor, is a simple one. Why do you seek the embrace of a lady, as opposed to a man?"

She bristled at the question, but didn't retort in a rude (expected) or violent (unexpected) fashion. "You have not found yourself attracted to a man before?"

"I have not, though I have known men that have been attracted to the same sex," Eric admitted. "My attention is to ladies of intelligence, curiosity, skill, and a touch of aggression." _All of which qualities Shiori possessed in abundance_, Eric reproached himself.

"So you're not looking for a housewife?"

Eric smiled. "Now you ask a question with no acceptable answer," Eric chided her. "I could say 'correct', and be damned to my words should I find that the lady I finally do gain love for is little more than a housewife. I could say 'incorrect', and in such a way artificially limit the field while probably angering someone somewhere."

The lady giggled. "I didn't mean to wedge you into a corner like that, sorry," she admitted.

The other lady stirred. "Who're you talking to?"

"The guy who lives here," the lady in front of Eric replied.

"Is he hot enough?" the other lady asked blearily.

"I think so," she said.

"Ask him to bed so we can get back to sleep," the resting lady half-moaned.

"Go," Eric said, waving her off. "When you awaken, I will have a meal readied for you."

-x-x-x-

(6 January 2041, 1030 Hours)

(Northwestern Sao Paulo, Commercial District Underground Rebel Base)

An apartment building served as the 'front' for the rebellion cell that Tabitha had painstakingly built over the years. Most of the apartments were actually in use, and as an apartment building manager she ruled with an iron hand, making sure that rent was paid and the building was maintained. The bottom floor had been given over to a couple businesses, a woodworking outfit that built sturdy chairs and bed frames, an accounting group, and ironically a parts manufacturer for German MP-98 submachinegun weapons.

Below the frame of the apartment building was the usual collection of sewers and drainage, and the apartment building was old enough to have ready access to both. Given how well the apartment was maintained, the public works personnel used the accesses inside the building in lieu of the street access some days. This was of little concern to Tabitha, as most of the sewer works personnel were Rebellion fighters just as she was.

Below even the utilities rested a deeper, darker secret.

"In Memoriam, Brazilian Secret Services, six men and women who stood against the Red and gave us this safehouse," Tabitha read off her paint job just inside the upper personnel door to the facility.

"That's all? Six?" Carlos Sandeira asked from behind his commanding officer.

"Yeah, just six," Tabitha said. "One bucket of dirt at a time, one bag of cement at a time, one sheet of iron at a time, until they had a full facility hidden underground. Twelve years to make this place," she recounted the story as was told to her. "I trained in under the last survivor of the build, until she was captured and used as a lab rat for a new version of VX chemical gas."

"That sucks," Carlos groused.

"I know, but the base is perfect for us," their commander replied. "How goes the project?"

"That's what I'm up here for, boss-lady, the armor techs have just begun fabrication of the first unit. They wanted you to see it."

"Outstanding," Tabitha said with a clear smile to voice.

"We'll have to be real careful how we use use 'em, their expected battery life is only about six hours, but near immunity to small arms fire would be nice," Carlos admitted.

"Still not safe from even an old _Panzerfaust_ (1), and the Nazis have thousands of those sitting around in warehouses," Tabitha replied.

"Beats the hell out of the alternative, boss lady," Carlos tried cheering her up.

"You're right, it is better than the alternative," she admitted as they began the trek down the stairs to the bottom floor.

"What's your vote?" Carlos asked.

"On what?" Tabitha asked for clarification. There were several outstanding issues still to be decided about the armor system, and each was still up for vote by the personnel.

"Shield or no shield?" Carlos asked.

"I'm undecided," Tabitha admitted. "It will slow us down, but it may just save our lives in a shooting match against _panzergrenadier_."

Down on the fourth floor of the facility, the manufacturing was now in full swing as four techs began the painstaking process of hand-crafting the plates of armor that would ultimately interlock into an armor set that would be used by a person. Each piece was custom-made to specifications for each individual armor set, and each armor set was made to specification for the use of one user – in this case Carlos would have the honor of the first set. Provided nothing went wrong, the first set would take no more than 2 weeks to prepare, and after that each successive set would take approximately 10 days.

Tabitha stopped in front of the large CAD render of the armor system, and proposed variants of the base type. The armor was itself amazing in terms of how simplistic it really was, when one got down to the basics, Tabitha considered. The user fit inside a sealed four-part armor shell, called the Base Plate, which itself was armored well enough to resist German and Japanese light arms. On the outside of the Base Plate would be fixed a series of Heavy Plates, with each plate providing up to four times the armor protection of just the base plate itself. Joints were provided for by way of an inner joint seal (Rubberized nylon) which was protected by segmented steel plates, and the joint itself was usually concealed behind heavy plate sections to prevent easy crippling by a lucky sniper or fragmentation. The whole assembly was airtight, air conditioned, and even would have the capability of being used with a chemical warfare suit worn inside, with the helmet acting as a separate gas mask system if needed. The bulk of the 'backpack' mass would be a combination battery system and life support unit for the wearer.

"Two and a half tons, without arms," Carlos said, still somewhat awed by the realization that he would eventually be wearing one.

"It is a trip to think it can be done," Tabitha admitted. "Who would have thought Myomer would be the answer? Ten years ago, I hadn't heard of this stuff, today we're racing the Nazis to build an armor system with it."

"Whoever came up with the idea needs to be immortalized in bronze for it," Carlos said as he hefted one of the sample Myomer bundles for visual inspection. "It won't do much for industrial work, but this may be the answer for warfare for the next few hundred years."

"I know," Tabitha said. "Still have to figure out how to overcome their tanks, though. The Panzer VII units have reactive armor, and the new Panzer VIII specifications call for composite armor capable of defeating guns up to 140mm."

"We'll figure something out," Carlos assured her. The two watched on as the armor technicians began bending and joining metal plates for the legs of the first armor suit.

For her part, Tabitha didn't really subscribe to the idealism of defeating the Nazis so easily, especially given their technological superiority to every other military force on planet. On the other hand, great big men tended to have great big faults...

-x-x-x-

(8 January 2041, 0800 Hours)

(Northeastern Sao Paulo, residential area)

"Report, Untersturmführer," Hans Grosse ordered calmly.

"Standartenführer (Colonel) Grosse, it's another meth lab," the chemical warfare specialist held up a basic drug test kit with a green-colored liquid in it. "Positive test for methamphetamine on five samples."

"God damn it! The lengths these _dumbkopf_ go to for money is sickening," he groused. "Hauptscharführer (Sergeant Major), bring those scumdogs over here," and Hans waved them over with his old Walther P-38, a family heirloom that had seen battle on five continents of the planet.

The two scrappies that had been producing methamphetamine at the time of the 'industrial accident' (read: explosion) were brought forward and forced down to their knees in front of Hans Grosse. "What do we do with them, sir?" the Hauptscharführer asked after a moment.

"Nothing, yet," the Standartenführer replied. "Boy, on your feet," he ordered after a moment, and gestured to the elder of the two.

"Sir," the teen said in a calm voice.

"I know your gang colors. You're part of XB7, which we've been trying to disrupt from pushing meth for months. Where does your loyalty stand?"

"Definitely not with you, asshole," the boy replied, seriously incensed that someone thought he would turn coat on his gang brothers.

"Shall we try this once again?" The stock of the Hauptscharführer's assault rifle drove into the teen's back, directly between his shoulder blades. Unprepared for such a strike, he fell face first into the road surface and struck hard enough to knock two teeth out. "Boy, on your feet," Hans ordered calmly. After a few moments, the punk stood up and stepped back from the Standartenführer. "Now, this time I will be a little more blunt. XB7 is a front for the Cartel remnants. You know this, I know this, the fucking hills know this."

"So?" the punk asked defiantly.

"I want to know where the other Meth factories are. Start talking."

"Fuck off," the punk replied.

"Nice, very defiant," Hans said. "Hauptscharführer, give him a reminder, please." A similar strike as the prior hit put him on the ground once again. "This time, when you stand up, reflect on the pain between your shoulders and remember that it is only a bare fraction of what I can do."

"Asshole," the teen grumbled as he stood up.

"Third time is the charm," Hans nodded twice, thinking to himself. "Now, kindly tell where the other meth manufacturing sites are."

"Fuck you and the horse you porked last night," the punk gave his defiance.

Hans looked over his right shoulder at the teen, sighed slightly, then raised his Walther P-38 to aimpoint. Before the kid could even flinch properly, he dropped the trigger. As the pink mist from the punk's brain began settling down to the ground, the Standartenführer lowered his aimpoint and returned the safety to the 'active' position.

"Now, your friend did a good job of being defiant, but my rule is three tries only, then the interrogation is over. So, will you talk?" Hans looked to the second punk, who was staring at the body of his slain comrade.

"C'mon, kid, best you talk or lay down next to him," the Hauptscharführer ordered.

"Okay, okay, I'll talk," the other one said. "You won't kill me if I talk, right?"

"No, you will not be killed unless you do something else to warrant it," Hans replied.

"Okay, okay," he jabbered nervously. "That house over there, the yellow one," he pointed to a reasonably upscale one farther down the road. "There's a large meth lab in the basement. That's the only one I know about."

"It is a step in the right direction," Hans said. "Hauptscharführer, see him into a prison brigade. He is not to be executed in pertaining to this offense. And bring back a radio when you return."

"_Jawhol_, herr Standartenführer." Without further word, the remaining punk was handcuffed and removed from the area.

"Untersturmführer, assemble an entry team and storm the structure. Take any residents alive if possible."

"_Jawhol_," the specialist moved off to gather up a team to enter and clear the structure.

"And this is why I hate the damned drug cartels," the Waffen-SS Standartenführer groused. "You have to beat them fucking senseless to beat some fucking sense into them. This Meth shit is nothing but a hazard to the entire human race. Hell, I wouldn't even give it to Jews, it is that nasty." There were a few chuckles from the personnel nearby, many of whom agreed with him.

"Do we finish demolishing this building?" the Sapper Specialist gestured to the house that had already been partially destroyed.

"Collapse the rest of the structure in and torch the rubble," Hans ordered. "When we have removed the lab from the second, implode that house and burn it as well. Remain on site until both are charred ash, then pack up and return to base."

"_Jawhol_, herr Standartenführer."

"This is the nature of my crusade," Hans Grosse said to nobody in particular. "I serve the Fatherland without question, I kill for the Fatherland as ordered when ordered, but I need no orders to crush drug dealers and drug manufacturers whenever I can root them out."

"And we follow you to the gates of Hell in pursuit of these maggots, herr Standartenführer Grosse," his Hauptscharführer staff assistant replied. "Your radio," and the Standartenführer picked up the receiver.

"338 Command from Standartenführer Grosse, acknowledge," Hans said into the radio on the Regiment command net.

"338 Command reads five by five. Send your traffic."

_The same operator as always_, Hans thought but did not say. "338, deploy 1 Battalion _Panzergrenadier_ to location of Meth lab explosion reported in northeast. Battalion is to be equipped for structure entry and chemical warfare cleanup. Code the deploy as Cartel pacification, area in vicinity of explosion is considered infested at this time."

"338 Command copies your traffic. Battalion will be deployed within the hour."

Hans always wondered what this operator looked like. She sounded smoking hot, but he could never put a face to the voice on the other end of the radio.

-x-x-x-

(10 January 2041, 2000 Hours)

(Southern Sao Paulo, Riverbank Slums area)

Eric was not in a particularly good mood, given that his mobility in the northeastern sector of town had been restricted significantly. Eric did not know what this 'Methamphetamine' material was, but given the descriptions of what it did to people Eric had little doubt that it was hazardous. Still, the search for more 'Meth labs' was hampering his operations in the area, which was hampering his timetable for squelching Nazis...which was making him grouchy.

_A downward spiral_, Eric thought after he entered the backdoor to his house (base of operations).

"This is some weird stuff brother," a voice far younger than the last interloper in his house said. "Look at these things! They glow!"

Eric stopped short of the door to the bed chamber in the shack house, listening to the new transients he had acquired. Unlike the two ladies of days past, these two had likely already gone through his primary packs as well as apparently found his swords.

"These things are cool! Where did they come from?" Eric moved silently into the room where he was keeping his gear, and was even able to approach the pair of young teens silently. Displaced northerners, Eric could tell just by observing their exposed body.

"I'm worried, brother," the sister of the two said. "Who knows what these things are or where they came from. I don't want to set it off and have these things kill us."

"They will not," Eric answered her fears by way of frightening them with his proximity.

"Oh my God! Who are you?" the brother asked. Eric was still cloaked in his robe and had the hood up, enough to completely conceal his identity in the dimly-lit house.

"Oh my God, it's the Reaper! The Reaper is here!"

"I have no such intentions," Eric admitted before he sat down on a chair in the room. The nebulous expression 'the reaper' was a local favorite to symbolize death, usually not in a pleasant fashion. "I do not live to kill," Eric said simply, arching his back to vent his spine joints in a creepy but exhilarating pop.

"But you are the reaper, aren't you?" the boy asked.

"No," Eric admitted easily. "A Reaper lives to reap, ergo to kill. The Reaper chases me, just the same as he chases everyone else."

"Then, if you're not The Reaper, what are you?" the sister asked. With a decent look at the two in the faint light of his swords, he could easily see the twin resemblance between the two. Neither child could be over fourteen at the absolute oldest, and Eric could recognize the telltales of street rats on their person. Kids, likely bereft of family, now roaming the streets; southern Sao Paulo definitely did not lack those kinds of ranks.

"I am, well, shall we say I solve problems on a large scale," Eric said with a thought to his turn of phrase. "Lots of problems, lots of solutions," Eric said nonchalantly.

"Do you help people?"

Eric considered it with a little physical animation. "Somewhat, but never directly," he answered after a while. "I can help a man, but it is better to teach them how to help themselves."

"Everyone says that," the boy said crassly.

"Not everyone says it for the right reasons," Eric sympathized. "Some say it out of laziness, they do not have motivation to help. Others say so from cowardice, afraid to help or afraid of the fate thereafter. I say it for the simple truth that I have seen the helpless, and it is a terrible thing to know that others can help themselves but will not do so."

The girl looked away. "What if, what if someone can't help themselves?" she asked while looking aside; Eric figured she had stumbled across a memory that bore too much pain, and didn't want to be seen remembering such anguish.

"If someone cannot help themselves, it is a dire fate they exist under," Eric answered. "I understand what you are saying; I have seen such circumstances in play," Eric remembered clearly the fates of the first metal band he had heard, how they were eliminated with firearms for a simple song – and a song not entirely untrue, as their fate proved. "All problems in Existence have solutions; it is just a matter of the solution and the scale of solution needed."

"Can you kill all the Nazis?" she asked after a moment.

"All, no, not likely," Eric said. He realized after a moment that he had tacitly admitted to being able to do combat with and eliminate the Nazis.

"Can you kill enough of them that they can never do bad things to people again?" the boy asked.

"Enough can be killed to dislodge them from power; yet, as I said prior, I am a problem-solver and not a reaper," Eric hedged on his duties. "If anyone can do so, I believe the rebels in this area are of stout enough heart to accomplish such a task."

"So you are saying we should become rebels?" the boy asked.

"If you seek to ensure a permanent solution to this nightmarish problem, to become a rebel would be a good start," Eric replied. "Eventually the Nazis and IJA will burn themselves out, no government lives forever, but in the interim it will result in many more incidents such as the one that scarred you two." Both points he figured were safe to say: the Nazis showed no signs of cleaning up their act, and the recorded history of the planet showed that even the mightiest states did not last forever. The third was on-the-spot inferred, but given the hesitation in the girl's voice and the aggression in the boy's speech, it was likely something nasty happened.

"What will you do?" the girl asked.

"I solve these problems in my own way," Eric said, again insinuating he was involved but not directly admitting to it. Eric reclaimed the glowing Katana he received from Shiori without any resistance. "These, however, these are not tools appropriate to a revolution." The sword went back into its sheath and Eric added it to his gearpack. Having been found by a pair of kids, he would not chance remaining in this area, regardless of their reactions. "My other blades?"

"Here," and the boy handed them over without issue. "Are you leaving?"

"I am," Eric said. "Night is when I work," he semi-lied. "You may retain my sleeping sacks; they will serve you better than they serve me."

Eric hefted his gearpack and was out the door without further word. In less than an hour, he would be in the eastern sector of town, with a slightly altered appearance and a new base of operations.

-x-x-x-

(13 January 2041, 2130 Hours)

(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Jardim Sao Luis peninsula suburban area)

The day waned long, lending its eerie red glow to the night sky rapidly approaching. Carlos sighed as he watched the last vestiges of daylight fade below the horizon, knowing that his would be a busy night seeing to the bodies and cleaning up the scene from a forensics standpoint.

"Come on, Carlos, we have all the information we need from these three," Tabitha said.

Carlos wasn't convinced the Hauptsturmführer (Captain) had given up enough information yet. "Kari? Daniel?" he asked of the two kids in the room.

"The only way I can think of to squeeze them for more info is the lapse of defense during pain," Daniel said. "And you know what we say about that."

"I wouldn't ask you to," Tabitha settled the question, or at least thought she did.

"C'mon, we don't do it very frequently, and this is a Captain we're talking about," Kari said, showing her aggressive side. "We don't get very many options to pick the brain of a Captain, I say we go for it."

"This is gonna suck, but I gotta agree with my sis," Daniel said. "We can't pass this one up."

"I am sorry," Tabitha said with clear dejection in voice. "Carlos?"

"Yeah," he turned away from the window and stepped into the room where the two dead and one (barely) living Nazi remained. "See if you can get him to talk before I must, boss-lady."

Tabitha crouched down slightly in front of the Hauptsturmführer. Her next sentences were in German, to ensure he understood what she was saying: "The vote is in, _Kraut_," Tabitha used a rather derogatory nickname for Nazis to get his attention. "The actual torture begins here in about a minute, unless you start talking real fast."

The Nazi SS officer groaned. "I fart in your general direction, bitch," and to emphasize his point he actually did fart, though it wasn't an impressive one even to Daniel.

"Fair enough," and Tabitha was next to sigh, though hers was of resignation as opposed to Carlos' fatigue. "Kari, Daniel, take your positions."

"This is really gonna suck," Daniel griped, but did as ordered.

The two kids moved to the area behind his chair, and in positional sense formed a triangle with him at the apex. Kari took the right side; her right hand went to the Nazi's head, specifically his right temple, and her left hand went to her brother. Daniel took the other side, his left hand to the Hauptsturmführer and his right to his sister, creating a loop link between the three. "Ready," Kari said simply, trying to conceal her dread at the coming task and its expected side effects.

"My turn, I guess," Carlos said before he drew the machete he was famous for. A thumb tested the sharpness of the point on the blade, then the sharpness of the edge itself. Without further word, he lined the point up with the location of a nerve running down the outside of the Nazi's leg, then jabbed in and began a minor sawing-tearing motion.

The screech the Nazi let out was extensive, but ultimately futile. Tabitha had prepared the house for this task, using heavy padding blankets around the perimeter of the room to muffle sounds so they could not escape the structure. A gunshot would only be barely audible to someone with their ear to one of the outside windows of the house, such was the thoroughness of her preparations.

At the point of screech, Tabitha could see both Kari and Daniel cringe. She was herself a telepath, but not of the quality or range the kids had. As such, when someone needed to have their thoughts yanked the hard way, the first two names for any such duty were Kari and Daniel. Still, despite the mentally-translated pain, Tabitha knew the actions being taken were producing results. Kari was doing the main digging in his now pain-fogged mind, while Daniel was reporting the findings heard in his sister's mental echo to Carlos, who was writing down shorthand notes as fast as possible.

"Hit him again," Kari requested. Carlos took his machete up and rested the blade on the top of the Nazi's left thigh. The first cut was to slice through his trouser leg, the second and third cuts were applied with a sawing motion to make for extensive pain to the target.

Tabitha could sense the raw pain being generated by Carlos' actions, but she neither turned away nor showed any sympathy for the Hauptsturmführer despite feeling it. Their belief in the _Ubersoldat_ and Arayn superiority had plunged the world into a century of warfare, conquest, bloodshed, and sheer rape on a massive scale. This soldier was no saint, but she knew intrinsically that nobody deserved this manner of wanton cruelty. The necessity of it was obscene, but the necessity for information was even greater.

"Kari?" Carlos asked.

"No more needed," said kid pulled away from the Nazi, though did not release her right-hand interlock with her brother's fingers. Tabitha recognized the gesture, the two of them had grown up in each other's minds, and after feeling the torture of someone else they would want the solace of each other's mental core to help bury the translated pain. Carlos took the moments of silence to clean his blade, knowing what was next.

"Carlos," Tabitha ordered after a moment's silence.

"Step out, I'll give you two minutes." Carlos said as he passed a sharpening stone over the edge of his blade. The time gap was for the three telepaths to get clear of the area, so they didn't have to hear the sound of someone's mind as their body died.

"I'll have the firebomb set on a ten minute timer," Tabitha said. It was rare to use a firebomb for covering their tracks, but in this case concealing three dead bodies was more a risk than simply torching the involved building. Like any of the periphery areas of Sao Paulo, most of the residents were rebels or connected in some fashion, and would not give up any useful information to authorities.

-x-x-x-

(25 January 2041, 2130 Hours)

(Imperial Japanese Army Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan)

"This campaign our German comrades are planning...brilliant," Akito Yamamoto said after the plan had been completely detailed to the assembled Gensui Taisho. "Were this 1940, or even as late as 1960, this campaign would be veritably impossible; we were too small in those years, and they too big. Today the tables have turned in our favor; we are the giants, they are the fleas. Russia suffers many faults, but has many quiet strengths. Decades of hard-line Communism will make them every bit as tenacious as the Americans were, false reasons for their defiance notwithstanding. They will try to make us pay dearly for every inch of land we do battle over. For this, we must show our superiority of technology and tactic, for we face the last of the old-world juggernauts with new-world technique."

"This will be no measure of easy, on the ground or in the air, and certainly not at sea," _Kaigun Chūjō_ (Vice-Admiral) Soa Hen Minh said cautiously. Vietnamese of origin, he had been raised in Tokyo and literally aced his way through the various colleges and postings necessary to gain rank in the Imperial Navy. Though others from the Empire's Territory had adopted a more 'nationalized' identity, he wore his name as a reminder of his homeland and his homeland's duty to the Empire, and nobody in the Admiralty thought less of him for it.

"What are your thoughts, Minh-san?" _Rikugun Shōshō_ (Army Major General) Enichi Yamagata asked, unsure what the Vice-Admiral was referring to. Descended from Aritomo Yamagata, his rank was one third political power, one third military prowess, and one third luck. He would likely not have made the rank _Rikugun Taisa_ (Colonel) had he not been in the right place (Panama) to crush a systematic rebellion and prevent their attempt to sabotage the Canal.

"We will eventually sunder the Soviet Navy to the waves, but before that accomplishment we will take casualties and we will not be able to provide the most extensive of support." Minh sighed; he knew this was a point of contention between himself and some of the others in the room, but his pragmatism won in the end. "We delude ourselves into believing that we and the Nazis are the only reasonable naval powers left. In aircraft carrier power, we are absolutely unrivaled now that the United States is done for. In submarine power, the Germans are undisputed. The Soviets have a surface fleet just as large as ours and the Nazis combined, with the exception of aircraft carriers in which we match the Russian Bear. Their submarine forces outnumber both us and the Germans almost two to one; lack of technological sophistication has not made them any less dangerous to our ships and submarines."

"Will this affect the ground campaign?"

"Yes," Asakura Gunji, Minh's superior in the fleet, said with complete gravity. "To what extent the ground campaign will be affected is a question open to interpretation. The main issue is the Russian naval response to our strike-through attack on land. If they focus west, toward the Germans as the plan entails, our naval burden will be relatively light. If they decide we are first, the worst-case scenario is no naval support from us outside of what we can ferry between the homeland and the Manchurian possessions, maybe not even that."

"And the tunnel between Manchuria and Hokkaido is not yet complete, and will be complete no earlier than '44," Marshall Yamamoto said. "The land-based air forces will assist in any fashion possible to protect the sea lanes of communication (2), but the Navy will need to shoulder the brunt of the hunting of their Russian contemporaries."

"The invasion begins early in '43, as per this timetable?" Minh asked, looking over the documents again.

"The Germans are repositioning forces and stocking supplies, as are we," Yamamoto said. "We will need our best troops forward to crush the Soviets. The Waffen SS is planning on a spearhead consisting of four army groups, three armies to a group, each army comprised of three or more Corps formations; nearly two million men total. They will have extensive follow-on forces, as will we. Our initial outlay shall be two Army Groups, given the necessity for heavy-resistance breaching is far less out here on the former-Chinese border than it shall be on the former-Poland border."

Yamagata was the next to speak in the silence of the staff room. "Conversely, while we have less in the way of military resistance to deal with, our major threat is environmental resistance," he said, flipping the projected map to their theater. "Let us not forget the major obstacle we must fight over is the distance involved; the Soviet Union spans more than half the length of a map for good reason. Our effort will be measured not in hundreds of kilometers, but _thousands_ of kilometers. No single campaign ever in the annals of military history has covered more than a fraction of what we intend. For this, we have to prepare very good logistics and support for our front-line forces to maintain reasonable forward momentum."

"Soviet reserves along our route?" Yamamoto asked.

"The Russians have a very long history of scorched earth combat, Yamamoto-_sensei_," Yamagata reminded his superior artfully. "Napoleon paid dearly for trying to forage his army instead of bringing his own logistic tail. We can plan for exploiting those supplies compatible with our machines, but we must assume from a logistics standpoint that those supplies will be removed or destroyed in place."

"Ah," Admiral Gunji smiled. "I now understand what you were referring to when you dictated a need for heavy oilers to move crude and refined product between our southwest possessions and Manchuria," he mused, suddenly of clear understanding of conversations past. "I will loosen up some of the other fleets and shake loose more transport. The Korean Peninsula has some of our best refining capabilities, and we will need them for such an invasion."

"We will likely need more," Yamagata groused. "Can we begin safe transport from our possessions in the Americas?"

Akihito Yamamoto grimaced. "Can we begin transport? Yes, easily; once the ships leave port, I would imagine there is little to no threat to their safety. Will it be safe before that? Questionable at best, not likely at worst. The Americas are by no means completely pacified; relying on them for any measure of supplies is a risk, given the sheer amount and audacity of their guerrilla forces."

"We will do what we can to move in supplies," Admiral Gunji assured them. "I will begin planning and initial orders immediately."

Vice-Admiral Minh stood along with his superior. "Does the Army require any additional support from my fleet?"

"Not at present, Minh-_san_," Marshall Yamamoto said. "We will call upon your guns and aircraft soon enough."

"Sir," the two Admirals left the room after quick and respectful bows. The room was silent for almost a minute before anyone spoke.

"One last monstrosity to bury, Yamamoto-_sempai_," Enichi Yamagata said.

Yamamoto chuckled mirthlessly at the comment from his subordinate. "We are neither Christian Angels nor Shinto Priest-saints ourselves, my friend."

"We do what we had to do, _sensei_," Enichi countered. "The nature of the world dictated that we had to get our hands bloody more than once. Such is the fate we have drawn for ourselves."

"Fate." Again, Yamamoto chuckled mirthlessly. "You know I was in Sao Paulo for the American Victory Day celebration?"

"I know this," The Major-General countered. "You were in the parade the day the _Chusa_ of the Southern Provincial Brazil was struck down by lightning."

"I know what the 'Hand of God' sounds like, courtesy of that incident. It is a terrible thing to hear, and just as terrible to see. His head exploded as if someone surgically implanted a grenade in his brainstem and detonated it. Panic, not just among the civilians, but among the men, _kohai_, the men! And the _Chusa_ was not the first or the last struck down by lightning. I am beginning to believe Oberstgruppenführer (General) Von Stauffenberg is not incorrect. God may have his hard dick pointed right at us."

"I don't like the odds on this one," Yamagata replied evenly. "I can deal with rebels, Chinese, natives, Soviets, no problem. Going against God, or worse, our old Gods and Goddesses? I do not see a way to win that one."

"Agreed," Akihiro groused. "Von Stauffenburg said the same, by the way."

"Proof that not all Nazis are incompetent assholes," Yamagata let fly just barely loud enough to be heard.

"No more so than our own ranks, Yamagata-_san_," Marshall Yamamoto semi-rebuked his subordinate. "Regardless, my sister is going to tour the holy sites of South America next month."

"Ah," this time, it was Enichi's turn to show surprise at a turn of events. "Keiko? The one who is partially sensitive to spirits and such?"

"Even better," Akihiko said with a wicked smile. "She has recently learned how to read my mind by touching her forehead to mine. Keiko says she can do it with anyone, but I've yet to see her do it for anyone but myself and her two children. I asked her to look around the sites where our men were struck down by this 'Hand of God' and try to discern what happened."

"Send a Miko to find something that no mortal man could find," Enichi Yamagata nodded with a passive smile at the quiet audacity of the plan. "And if she finds anything?"

"If she does find anything, I am open to suggestions, Vice-Admiral. I highly doubt an airstrike would work on something like that," Admiral Yamamoto said warily.

"Feh," Yamagata dismissed that line of thought immediately. "If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it," Shōshō Yamagata quoted an old American military doctrine. "I'll nose around next week when I'm in the area."

He had no idea it would be his force to eventually prove the doctrine correct, but not in the fashion he intended.

-x-x-x-

(29 January 2041, 2300 Hours)

(Sao Paulo, Brazil, northern commercial district)

Watching the Nazis, who were watching the prostitutes, adroitly sickened Eric as to their intentions. Some would call the ubiquitous harlot a predator, given the way they sought to trap a man and drain them dry of finance and motivation and family, but those were the minority of cases in Eric's purview. Most prostitutes the Mage had encountered, even in Sao Paulo as opposed to his prior world, were simply out to finance their day-to-day lives and to ensure children were fed; hardly a predatory intention.

The Nazis, though, fit the far end of the scale to a tee. Calling a Nazi a predator counted as three parts understatement and two parts insult to the average predator, at least in Eric's opinion. A predator did what he (or she) did out of an instinct, as often as not unreasoned and just an automatic response. A Nazi did what he or she did based on their belief of superiority, with clear reasoning that they were entitled to do such things. And these Nazis were thinking about screwing the prostitutes in the area without the courtesy of paying, a common occurrence from the lower ranks of the SS according to the prostitutes Eric spoke to.

Of course, even the lower ranks could be dealt with as would be appropriate.

After refusing the Nazi advances, the harlots moved toward Eric in a semi-concerted fashion, enough organization that Eric could tell it was a planned move but not enough organization to demonstrate planning to the Nazis. Unsurprisingly, the Nazis followed, though not close. The lewd leers and obscene catcalls did not stop, again unsurprising to Eric, and he simply waited beneath his new cloak and prepared his spell – a new one, researched just for this purpose.

The harlots stopped at the center-street pedestrian crossing, checked the flow of traffic, and began their quick crossing. Eric was thankful that their crossing was not in the vicinity of any parked vehicles that might obstruct his view of the optimal placement of the spell, for he needed to target ground to activate this spell. They continued to the center divider on the street, then stopped for a decent clearing to finish their trek. The delay continued to significant length, enough so that one looked back with clear consternation at the approaching Nazis.

The Nazis took advantage of the delay in their crossing to try to catch up with the harlots. They got close in their attempt, but the ladies made a break for it through the light traffic in the far side of the two-file (3) road, and without seeing themselves slaughtered were able to reach the far side of the road before the perverted Nazis could pursue. This left the gray-suited personnel stranded on the center median, with a wall of traffic approaching from both directions and thereby preventing them from moving.

The perch he took on the side of a building, up the 'emergency' stairs of the building proper, gave him a God's eye view of his target, enough to prevent even the massive transport vehicles and mini-caravans from interfering with his design. Still he made himself look inconspicuous, sitting instead of standing, cloaked against the threat of rain, veritably unmoving to simulate weakness and exhaustion, and nobody questioned his presence even though more than a few had seen and commented on him.

The Nazis looked around the center isle with consternation, clearly wanting to continue their pursuit, and Eric could not blame them. At least two of the ladies were attractive enough physically to have garnered Eric's attention, and without a doubt the same pair had given the Nazis instant fantasies. That they were trapped was their instant frustration, but more to the point it also made Eric's intercept solution that much easier. Unable to move without being run down by the mechanical horses, blocked into the island area by way of column supports for some form of rail contrivance never completed, they could do naught but suffer the flames Eric intended for them.

Eric struck a match, a form of instantaneous fire that could substitute for the 'small fire' material component of the spell. "_**Lights dance, flames of the eternal stars give rise to Luminous Inferno**_," he chanted in his native language, ancient Greek, which would make the spell unrecognizable to local ears. Within a bare moment the match was extinguished by the beginning of the spell, and Eric watched on as his handiwork played out in between two solid columns of traffic.

The spell had an interesting psychological quirk within it, even though it was not structured for such a way to do battle. The appearance of glowing balls of light, each ball slowly changing shape as would a bladder of water under varying forces, was a frightening thing to see from anyone's perspective; even Eric had seemed more than a bit worried when he first tried this spell a week ago. The fear effect was mirrored in the vehicle users just as much as the Nazis surrounded by it, as multiple vehicles swerved and tried to get away from what they now beheld, actions that resulted in multiple crashes of vehicle against vehicle in such tight confines. The panic even became so great that one of the _Sturmtruppen_ tried to bolt; his flight only lasted three paces before he was struck by a massive cargo-mover vehicle and flung over a hundred paces distance by the impact. The bloody streak left by his eventual landing only provided testament to his demise.

The balls continued expanding as each filled with the contents of the spell, until the pressure inside exceeded the limits of the magical containers. When the luminous balls burst, all three of the Nazis were coated thoroughly with the lightly-glowing liquid content, as well as the side of the cargo-moving vehicle and the solid ground around the median rise. The glowing liquid settled for a moment, then after two digits changed on a nearby clock the entire patch of liquid burst into combustion.

Eric watched with an unblinking gaze as the three Nazis shrieked their death-throes of intense flaming pain, though he also noted the similar throes of civilians nearby that were now panicked from the spell involved. Only the three were caught in the flames, with none so foolhardy as to try extinguishing the flames and therefore attract the magic fluid to themselves. The fire itself lasted only 90 short counts on the clock, more than ample to kill the Nazis in question and char their remains almost unrecognizable. The cargo truck nearby continued burning as its contents were lit by the magic flames, though other than the four intended casualties nobody was injured seriously.

-x-x-x-

(31 January 2041, 1230 Hours)

(Nazi SS Headquarters South America theater, Manaus, Brazil)

"This...this is insane! What the hell kind of weapon is that?"

"I told you God has a hard-on for us, and I spoke in jest," Hauptsturmführer 'Mad Max' Rudelt groused. "As of right now, I don't think it is God, and I don't think it is in jest anymore."

"No shit, old friend," Oberstgruppenführer Von Stauffenberg said. "This is no manner of weapon we have ever seen, much less conceived. Sure, it bears superficial resemblance to the American invention napalm, but this is...this is..."

"It's not human," the other person in the room said.

"Then what is it, Untersturmführer?" 'Mad Max' asked of the junior lady in the room.

"The obvious guess would be something divine, but I'm not buying that," she said with a thoughtful tone. "Christian ethos holds the light to be good, the darkness to be bad, but everyone else has differing opinions. It could be demonic, it could be animistic, or it could be just plain sorcery. Whatever it is, it is not technology."

"Well, that leaves a lot of open territory," 'Mad Max' replied.

"So, what does the SS Paranormal Division need from us to begin work on this problem?" Heinrich Von Stauffenberg asked.

"Sir, so far I do not have a decent direction of inquiry, therefore I can't begin to guess what manner of resources we would need. Once I have an idea what is causing this, we can begin narrowing down the list of suspect being groups and from there we can begin considering a response."

"Makes sense, boss," Hauptsturmführer Rudelt commented. "Don't want to throw personnel into the path of a super-ass-raging Demon without knowing what we're up against."

"I wouldn't want to throw personnel into the path of a 'super-ass-raging demon' to begin with, sir," Untersturmführer Kari Teane replied evenly. "There is such a thing as 'we don't have enough resources to kill it conventionally', and I'd like to avoid getting into a situation where we have to squander good men to no gain in a fight like that."

"Well, holy shit," Maximilian said with a clear hint of awe to voice. "The rear-echelon personnel actually do give a crap about us front-liners. Shocking, shocking beyond all compare," he said with mock gravity.

The bent of his comment was completely obvious to everyone in the room, much less the fact that she was both very attractive and somewhat exotic to the 'line' Waffen SS personnel. "Sorry, sir, just because I'm a 'Paranormal' doesn't make me 'free and easy'."

"Serious? Not negotiable?" Max half-heartedly pressed.

"Max, watch your step," the Oberstgruppenführer warned lightly. "SH/SA paperwork is a bitch. And required if she says so."

"If that's the worst he flies, sir, I won't complain," Kari replied. "I've been asked far worse. Besides, it's just some pervert male historian that said the Celt druids were 'free and easy' like that."

"Point," Hauptsturmführer Rudelt conceded.

"If you are asked worse, make sure you tell me, Untersturmführer Teane. You're here to potentially go up against something we suspect can kill indiscriminately with supernatural skills. The last thing I want you worrying about is the line troops taking vulgar passes at you."

"_Jawhol_, herr Oberstgruppenführer," Kari replied evenly. Other officers had said the same, though when she actually put that to use she was treated indifferently at best, or with open hostility at worst. The 'street credit' of the SS Paranormal Division wasn't exactly the highest among the SS, and more often than not it showed.

"Okay, assuming whatever is doing this shows up on our front door, what do we do?" Maximilian asked in the silence of a short pause.

"Besides run to the hills?" Heinrich Von Stauffenberg asked after a few moments of consideration.

"You may not have to," Untersturmführer Teane said diffidently. "Use Waffen-SS judgment, sir. If it's human, kill it like a human until you have reason to believe it is not. If it looks like a demon, but is somewhat small, try hitting it with a tank's main gun or artillery."

"Somewhat small?" Max asked with an arched eyebrow, a clear request for clarification.

"No more than 3 meters. Larger demons are assumed to be more powerful in both physical terms and supernatural skills."

Von Stauffenberg reminded himself of an old caveat he had been taught when he was young. 'There will be exceptions'. Heinrich figured this matter would be no exception. Such matters of demoncraft and sorcery were far from something he had ever studied; being a professional soldier, his duty was to a real-world battlefield, not to the theories of ancient legends and mystic rituals. He figured, in some perverse alternate land somewhere in Existence, there would be warriors who did battle solely on the skills of the mystics, but those forces were not Waffen SS and were not fighting the Waffen SS..._maybe not_, he reminded himself mentally.

"You're thinking something, her Oberstgruppenführer," Maximillain noted.

"Give me a moment," Heinrich requested. "Frau Untersturmführer, were we able to capture this interloper, could you possibly make use of it?"

"Possibly, depending on what it is and how much of a hard-on it has for us, sir," she said calmly. The two field officers looked at each other with raised eyebrows, given their ongoing thought was 'something' had a hard-on for the SS. "If it's a human sorcerer, I have little doubt we could squeeze him or her for technique. Minor demons can be sealed and contracted, but major demons might be a problem. Most magic creatures can be eliminated in place or contracted, and depending on what you find, killing it may just be the easiest and safest route."

"And if it is more than just a 'major' demon?"

"If it is that bad, your only real option is to stick your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye," the Untersturmführer said with the finality of a death sentence.

-x-x-x-

(4 Februaru 2041, 0130 Hours)

(Sao Paulo, Brazil, northwestern residential district)

Most of the Nazis and IJA that now controlled South America lived like sensible invaders – on their bases, behind copious amounts of security. Not all of the IJA did so, and especially not their civilian personnel or defense contractors.

"Remind me again, why are we doing this guy?" Anita asked.

"He's a high-up for Mitsubishi Defense and Aerospace. Killing him should send a message to their board of directors that they are not welcome here in South America." if Nicole Whitman could sound any colder about it, how was lost on Anita.

Silence pervaded their hide for nearly a minute. "Think he'll get frisky with his lady like he did yesterday?"

"Might, might not," Nicole said diffidently. She didn't rise to the unstated bait set by her friend and spotter, mainly because she considered this was a wholly inappropriate time for her to be thinking along those lines.

"Do we kill the lady as well?" Anita wondered aloud.

"Optional," Nicole said. Killing his mistress was not particularly germane to the operation as laid out, but Nicole wouldn't shy away from killing someone fraternizing with Nazis or IJA. She had a serious disdain for anyone who could stand for being fucked by these dishonored invaders.

"I'll buy that," Anita said calmly. Her red eyes squinted through the night-vision and infrared rangefinder spotting scope at the target building. "You really are a Whitman," she said after a second.

"Oh yes," Nicole said with a slight smile to tone.

"And here we go," Anita said as she watched a vehicle stop in the driveway. "Tango confirmed, matches ID. His mistress is also getting out."

"Recommendation?" Despite the fact that Anita had no skills with firearms, she had an almost preternatural sense for how to do a battle (or similar violent task, such as a snipe hit) and make it work first time every time. "Well, that didn't take long," Nicole groused, seeing the mistress yank her tube top up over her head without even having made it to the front porch of their house.

"And I keep thinking, this guy is married with three kids at his home in Japan. What does the wife think of her?" Anita said.

Nicole didn't answer immediately, since she was fixated on determining what would be a good shot for her. Nicole wouldn't admit it, but her crosshairs were also fixated on the light-amplified picture of the mistress' bust, which was significantly larger than her own. "Wife may not know, but she will once we do this." Nicole's comment ignored the fact that Japan did not have the typical Western bias against multiple relationships, especially in relation to mistresses.

The target and secondary keyed their way into the house and diverted into the best possible location – the parlor, with its massive six-pane picture window that did not have curtains yet. A table light was turned on, to which Nicole immediately backed off her scope to prevent NV flash-blinding and to remove the add-on night-vision filter for her normal scope.

"Think you can get 'em with that level of light?" Anita asked as she looked into the target structure with her own non-NV spotting scope.

"I can get 'em both in one shot," Nicole said.

"Ah, when she lap-dances him, you'll have a direct shot to both from this angle," Anita mused with an amused tone.

"Snipers always say one shot, one kill," and she paused slightly before she dropped the shot.

The round had struck the lady dead in the sternum after a travel distance of some two hundred thirty yards, and being an 8mm Gewehr AP round had no difficulty cutting its way through the window and their flesh. The 240-grain tungsten core slug blew through her heart without issue, exited her back between two ribs and slightly left of the spine, then transited the gap between the mistress and the salaryman without reserve. His fate was a bit slower to come, for the round struck him in the throat and barreled through his spine on the way out, crippling him at the same time it left him to choke on his own blood.

"I wonder if snipers get bonus points for one shot, two kills," Anita said as she surveyed the result of her teammate's shot. After a prolonged second, the lady slumped to the left, collapsing first onto the remainder of their loveseat and shortly thereafter onto the floor, symbolically landing tits up as if to visually cue her demise to the world. The guy could naught but sit there, staring wide-eyed into the distance as he gripped his throat, clearly choking to death and unable to do anything about it. His hand went for his cell phone, but never even dialed a number before he lost the strength to hold it up. Both watched as his eyes rolled back and his chest stopped heaving, the final throes of his death.

"Light's out," Nicole said before she recentered her crosshair on the one offending lamp. The lampshade was a small one, leaving no real concealment for the lightbulb behind it. A single shot caused it to flash bright, then fade to nothing in less than a second.

"Lights out on one of Mitsubishi's 'finest', _amigo_," Anita said.

"How long?" Nicole asked in the silence thereafter, meaning how long it would take someone to go looking for him and find two dead.

"Nine hours, tops," Anita judged.

"Time to pack up and head home."

-x-

Eric found himself puzzled, but only temporarily. The weapon was definitely a firearm – the metallic clicking of the weapon's internal mechanism made that apparent – but there was no loud thundercrash or staccato series of near-explosions to accompany. Just a very muted pop that he barely heard, almost the sound of a person's joint creaking from a lack of movement, and the delayed sound of glass being damaged by the metal monstrosity sent downrange. A most curious weapon, he judged, and one with immense potential if used right.

He waited for the team of ladies in the room to disappear out the back of the structure and head south before he moved from his concealed position to see the application of their handiwork. Tracing their target point was not all that difficult, given their angle of attack lent itself only to one building, and when he found their target he was rather shocked at the sheer alacrity of the strike. Apparently the same round that had killed the lady and left her with a gaping chest wound had also killed the guy, and both were dead relatively fast. The other hole in the window made no sense to him, since it had no apparent target to the Mage, but he doubted it was an accident.

He was quick to depart the scene. No doubt someone would find the deceased and raise a ruckus over their deaths, and Eric did not want to be in this quadrant of town when it happened.

-x-

Were this a simple hooker-and-John kill job, Enichi would still be at home, sleeping in on his Gods-given day of leave. As it happened, he not only interfaced with this high-level Mitsubishi representative, but he attended the same prep school as the representative, lo those many years ago he was in school.

"Single round got 'em both, Shōshō Yamagata," the Nazi investigator said.

"Not bad handiwork," he admitted. "What can you tell me?"

"Well, it's one of ours," by which the investigator meant a Nazi weapon. "8-millimeter Tungsten-core armor penetrator. No doubt fired from one of our rifles, and if I'm not missing my guess on the rifling grooves it should be a G4A4 rifle. Lab will give us final word on that."

"Your rifle, your man?" Enichi had to ask the question, despite how painful it would be in the long run.

"No, sir!" the SS Military Police officer said. "We've begun moving to 12 millimeter for our sniper weapons, based somewhat on the old American fifty-caliber machine guns. Besides, the location they took the shot from would be an indefensible death-trap in a fire fight. No self-respecting sniper would pin themselves in like that, even for a cream-your-pants shot like this one."

"Where?" the Inspector pointed down a narrow gap between two houses to one in the distance. "Someone took that shot at _night_? From _there_?" Enichi asked with clear shock and awe to voice.

"Yeah, no joke, sir, lab boys have already found powder traces in that building. They shot from there, as hard as it is to believe. Thing is, nobody in the area heard the shot at all, nobody in the area saw suspicious movement in the area. Like ghosts had done the kill."

Enichi smiled to hide the wave of inner dread that overcame him. Things were assuredly getting bloody in this corner of the Americas, and not to the favor of the conquerors.

-x-x-x-

(20 Februaru 2041, 0130 Hours)

(Sao Paulo, Brazil, southeastern commercial district)

"Beer?" the bum across the alley asked, waving one in Eric's direction.

"Certainly," Eric said, not willing to turn down a gesture of solidarity with the base of displaced persons he moved in. "To what shall we salute today?"

The bum across the way laughed. "To the Nazis: may their balls be cursed off with a seven-year itch," the guy said, hoisting his cheap beer in salute.

"A bit light a fate for those scumdogs, but I drink to it," Eric said, returning the beer salute.

"What's your beef with the Krauts?" the bum asked after he chugged half his beer.

"They fuckin' everybody," Eric said. "My beef isn't just for myself, but for everyone. Sure, the bastards killed my wife and daughters, but I'm not the only one. World would be a better place without 'em all," the Mage said in full form of his masque, his cover-legend necessary to prevent undue suspicion.

"Yeah, yer right about that, _amigo_, just ain't no way for you 'n' me to kill 'nough of 'em."

_I have a few tricks_, Eric thought without saying. "Sad but true, _amigo_, sad but true."

"You mil?" Eric had no problem understanding that he was referring to military, or retired military.

"No," Eric replied, having knowledge only of mercenary operations long in the past of this day. "Just a former farmer."

"God, we've got a whole country worth'n homeless just hanging around. Former army, former farmers, former construction, former teachers, everyone we'd need for our own little society. Wonder if the rest of the world's like this."

"Maybe," Eric mused. "Hey, look at the brass on this cocksucker," the Mage mused. He wasn't sure what a rooster had to do with sucking, but he knew it was a common and favored insult, especially against men.

"Oh, that one's got some rank. Too bad we can't ask God to lightning his ass," the bum said. "Another beer, _amigo_?"

"Definitely," Eric said as he crushed the can in hand and tossed it aside, toward a pile of existing trash. The next beer was the same as the first, lacking in flavor but definitely spiked in the alcohol department. "I wonder," he mused.

"Huh?" the bum asked.

"If I prayed to God, would he do something about this guy?" Eric nodded toward the approaching officer.

"Not likely," the bum said. "Look, I'm gonna boogie. Nice talkin' to ya, man. Keep it real."

_I intend to make their pain and fear real_, Eric thought and did not say.

The Mage slipped his Enhancer Ring off his finger once again, to ensure the language he used was only Norse. "_**Eternal silence between stars, the blackest night gives rise to the Dark Void**_," he chanted the spell letter-perfect, enough to trip it for where his eyes were focused on the mixed group of Japanese and German brass.

_**Dark Void**_, in and of itself, existed as a bit of a misnomer. The spell did not create a vacuum space, nor did it draw anything in – it simply built a shell of pure darkness energy under the soldiers in question. The most senior IJA solider was fast enough to get away from the ascending bubble of blue-violent energy, but two Nazi infantry officers and one IJA Naval Air pilot did not escape. A third Nazi was natively outside the radius of the attack, but his compassion for his comrades caught him by the arm. Eric was fast to put the Enhancer Ring back on, so he could understand what was said and shouted.

The Nazi finally let go of the arm of the IJA pilot, now devoid of the body that spawned it, though the dark energy had found his hand just as readily. He shrieked and tried shaking it off even as it began eating into his arm, a futile gesture as Eric knew. The Pure Energy / Pure Element attacks consumed everything they touched, and Dark Void was one among their number. "MY GOD! MY GOD! GET IT OFF!" the Nazi shouted as the energy began eating up his forearm inconsistently, in bits and starts. The Mage could tell it was beginning to fade, but they wouldn't know that critical fact.

"Hold your arm up! Hold your arm up!" the IJA Infantry officer shouted in response. The Nazi did, but continued waving it around, making loud shrieking noises and presenting an imprecise target for the modern-day samurai. He finally gave up and targeted a 'safer' location, the elbow of the Nazi's right arm, and unleashed a precise Iaijutsu. Eric was rightly surprised at the speed and precision of the IJA wannabe Samurai's strike; the blade flashed true and struck just above the elbow, removing the forearm and everything damaged down his arm.

"GAAAGGGHHH! MY ARM!" the surviving Nazi shouted, shocked to horror as the now-severed arm absorbed the last of the dark energy and rotted to dust.

"By the Gods, what manner of nightmare was that?" the IJA Infantry Officer asked, his sword aimed at the offending part-of-an-arm.

"My—my arm! It consumed my arm!" the Nazi said, all the while busy wrapping up his stump. "At least all it got was my arm, greatest thanks Shōsa," he said.

"The Gods do not favor us any more, that even the Gods of Darkness now spawn death and destruction upon us," the Shōsa took more than a few moments to inspect his blade for any trace of the dark energy he was witness to and severed from a fellow man, then cleaned it and sheathed.

"Which God do I talk to so this shit stops?" the Nazi asked.

"I think this is well past mortal hands, comrade," the IJA Infantry officer said coldly. "We will either win back their favor, or be destroyed by them."

_The Gods are not involved here, but I'm sure I can substitute for them in wrath if not in scale_, Eric thought but did not say.

.

-x-x-x-

(24 Februaru 2041, 1230 Hours)

(Sao Paulo, Brazil, southeastern commercial district)

"Your brother, he is well?" Arika Tōmei asked of her traveling companion.

"He is very concerned," Keiko Yamamoto said quietly. "He frets over the invasion of Soviet Russia. Every day, he learns more about the Soviet preparations to meet our assault, and every day he learns of more ways they intend on bleeding us white."

"Is it truly that bad, Keiko-san? The Ministry of Information says we cannot lose against them."

"The Ministry of Information wants us to be at ease," Keiko admitted as she surveyed the area, looking for something to eat. "They are good-natured and doing their duty, but they are disconnected from reality to a degree."

Arika could do naught but giggle at the unusually cynical tone Keiko took when speaking about the Ministry of Information. "I know they aren't always accurate, but they act in good faith, for our men."

"They try, but sometimes..." her phrasing trailed off as her gaze locked on something. "This is...one of the locations?"

"One moment," Arika looked at her list of the 'locations of interest' supplied to them by Keiko's brother. She compared street locations and store landmarks to the contents of the list, and it matched the most recent event. "Uh, yes, it is. This one was a black shell that consumed everything. An Infantry Officer swore it was the hands of Gods of Darkness reaching through the ground to consume the men."

"A black shell, glowing white fire, lightning, explosions, these are not the works of just one being," Keiko judged, having read forward somewhat on her 'mission' from her brother. Her main concern was the various ancient religious sites, the feelings and histories associated with the call of the Gods. The bizarre happenings around Sao Paulo were a diversion from her purpose here, but a diversion that may be important in the long run.

"Can we go in there?" the other Miko asked, looking at the area that had been marked off and was guarded by a stern-faced Nazi _sturmtruppen_.

"We have orders from my brother, such as they are," she said. "You have the German copy?"

"I do," she answered after a moment. "I don't speak a bit of German, though."

"I can speak it," Keiko had learned German over the years by interfacing with a lot of German religious experts – she even maintained a cordial relationship with the SS Paranormal division, an unusual formation inside an otherwise straight-laced military machine. "Stay close."

"I'm with you, Keiko-_san_," Arika didn't look forward to dealing with a SS soldier, something about their demeanor always struck her as that of a wolf barely concealing itself in human form.

The approach was a short jaunt across the road and over to the opposite sidewalk, then down the block another hundred meters before they were at the cordoned-off area. In so doing, she walked past a spot where a bum had sat and watched the transit of officers, a key location that would have spoke volumes to her had she realized it. Instead, her focus on the cordon was enough for both herself and her escort, and as it happened also enough for the guard, who found the approach of two Mikos to be an extremely unusual curiosity.

Their bent was obvious to the Nazi; a warning hand was outstretched to the side, a clear gesture to stop before they entered the 'infected' area. "I cannot allow passage," he said in surprisingly literate Japanese.

"Oh," Keiko was surprised by his command of the Japanese language in such a case, but regained composure quickly. "I have orders from Rikugum Taisho Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Army to investigate this site and multiple others. These orders are undersigned by Oberstgruppenführer Heinrich Von Stauffenberg. A copy," she said in German before she presented their written letter of authorization. She wanted to make sure she was understood clearly by the guard.

The guard received the letter and read it twice. "These orders appear to be in order. I will warn you, though, the darkness that ate those men, it hasn't faded," and he gestured to the patch of sidewalk that was now stained violet.

Keiko bent over slightly to look at the area. "I don't think it is still here in significant quantity, there is no luminosity." The guard held up the traditional read-and-yellow-striped warning tape to allow the two Miko to pass. The attack spot had been cordoned with an extra two meters of padding around it, to prevent any kind of 'side effect' of exposure, such was the outright fear this attack had generated.

"Is it safe?" Arika asked after a moment's hesitation.

"I think so, most of this is just permanent staining from the energy discharge," Keiko said. "But...this is insane, this circle has to be three meters wide."

"On a scale from bad to worse, how does it rate?" the Nazi rifleman guard asked.

"Very bad, but not to 'grim reaper' bad as of yet," she said. "A moment of silence, please."

Both her traveling companion and the guard remained silent as Keiko knelt just outside the perimeter of the circle. She hesitated intrinsically before her next step, since she knew she was going to chance herself being infected with this nightmare method of death, but after four days the risk would be minimal. With just a bare flinch, she applied her hand to the spot of the attack, and in an instant she revisited the attack in her mind's eye. It was enough to cause even her to panic, such was the overwhelming fear and pain of the five consumed.

"Keiko! Keiko!" Arika shouted, having grabbed her friend as she bolted backwards to prevent her bowling over the Nazi. "Keiko! Are you all right?"

"I—I—Good Gods, I've never felt anything like that!" Keiko stammered in Japanese. She collapsed to her knees, still trembling from the translated terror of five hardened soldiers being slowly vaporized by pure darkness energy. "I—I felt their deaths, their terror, their..." she drew silent.

"Keiko, calm down. It's okay, you're not going to suffer their fate as well," the younger Arika said clearly. "We shouldn't have done this. Let's get you something to drink and forget about this."

"No, no," Keiko said adamantly. "My brother wanted these checked by an expert; he called on us for a reason. I will finish."

Keiko took a few moments to resume her kneeling position, and a few more moments to calm herself to begin again. She could call upon her telepathy by way of touching her forehead to someone else's head, particularly her son and daughter but also to her brother as well, though the severe reaction she received from the attack spot had to be something more than just her own latent skills. She hesitated for nearly a minute before she placed her hand to the stained ground, and this time fought through the terror reaction inside her until the mental image was done, a process that took more than a minute.

After her second reliving of the attack, she was left with only the components of the location, amplified by the sheer power of the attack used at the location. Just as using a firearm left evidence of what had happened, so too did mystic arts leave trace and example of the attack. A court would not recognize such as evidence in a trial, though this was not intended for legal purposes – and, in all reality, the courts of both the IJA and Wehrmacht could be perverted to any purpose necessary, regardless of the normal bent of such evidence.

What she detected after the image of death was intellectually frightening beyond all compare, even more so than the actual attack.

Keiko rose slowly from the ground, clenching her fists in trepidation and fear, both aimed at an unknown being somewhere in the city. "Is...what is wrong, Keiko-san?" Arika asked after a bare moment.

"It...I felt it. The attack was generated by a being with control over absolute darkness, but the being itself held neither good nor evil intent." Her order of Miko trained on how to sense good and evil, and had exercises where they were to pick out an 'evil' candle amongst a display of a thousand candles, all physically alike. "The most disturbing part of it...isn't the complete lack of alignment, it is...pure coldness, as if killing these men was simply another act in some larger scheme of things."

"You mean, something is targeting the IJA and Wehrmacht for extermination?" the Nazi asked.

Keiko simply nodded, hoping that what she felt of the power, of the pure darkness, she never crossed.

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence)

(Indeterminate time, date, location)

No shackles, no binding, nothing restrained her physically, but by the same token nothing needed be used to restrain her. Vala Atrebas had little doubt that any one of the persons she had been captured by could easily eliminate her in close quarters, and just the same could strike her down at range with their massive bows should she try spellcraft as a counter. Eric had shown a fondness for long-range combat beyond even Diamond's wildest dreams, and apparently these 'elves' took that thought to a whole new level with the large bows (easily taller than a man) and quivers of enchanted arrows.

It did confuse her to an extent that, while she considered the Elves to be people, they didn't consider her to be a person at all – more likely an aberration at best, and a dire threat at worst.

Eric had been a master of 'absolute warfare', techniques and forms of logic by which he always (or nearly always) achieved his objectives. Most were painfully basic and uninventive, but exceedingly effective tricks of battle and methods of engagement. Others were more devilish and baited the wise foe with his own perceptions before annihilating his forces. In this case, 'absolute warfare' was telling her she stood in a land that she could not readily use her native advantages to her own purpose without someone using a counterattack for which she could not readily defend.

It didn't help that they had confiscated all her relics except one, the translator ring given her by Verthandi (of which they neither knew of nor could track to her). At least that gave her a semblance of ability to understand those around her. She kept quiet about that understanding, instead using their assumption of being not understood to garner intelligence.

Now, the days of listening and learning were to be put to use. Her Trial had been called; should she fail to defend herself properly, Vala had not doubt that her death would be swift and unavoidable.

The Trial was to be held in an old stone bulwark, what Vala had learned was called a 'castle' by the people around her, that had been captured from Humans and retasked for the use of the Mystic Alliance (Elves, Sylves, Nymphs, and Dragons) as a staging ground and strongpoint. Vala had surreptitiously looked over the ramparts of the castle and the arrangement of personnel inside, which only cemented the thought that there would be no escape. Of more curious interest was the presence of Dragons, multiple Dragons at that, all with eyes on her. To someone who had never seen anything larger than a two-story house, the existence of a Castle was somewhat unnerving and the existence of Dragons was outright frightening.

The telepathic reassurances of the Dragons, however, changed the name of the game. Somebody in this unusual alliance did not want her dead just for being a human.

Inward they traversed through the internal works and defenses of the castle, and finally came to rest in the Tribunal Room. The room had a central edifice for her to stand and be prosecuted, but more to her interest was the presence of the raised bench for the main prosecutor and the box to the side for the judges. Eight entered the box from a separate room, two Elves, two Sylves (Whom almost appeared human, except for being a lot physically lighter than humans), two Nymphs (whose distinctive blue hair gave them away), and two Dragons in a humanoid form (one Red, gauging by her hair, and another that might be the massive off-white Dragon that had terrified her so).

The last in the room was the Prosecutor, who would (in this case) attempt to force Vala to admit some manner of wrongdoing. Vala was somewhat unsurprised that the prosecution would be handled by a rather old Elf, given the stance most of them had taken toward her over the intervening week. In stark contrast, the Sylves and Nymphs had not taken an overt liking to her, but neither had they shown any active form of disdain about her. The Dragons, of course, were very curious about her, as more than a few persons had made mention of over the intervening days.

A sympathetic guard had made sure Vala knew what she was in for, to which the displaced Mage-In-Training was eternally grateful. The only defense in this case would be not admitting to any semblance of wrongdoing, to which Vala could easily pass muster without tripping up. She enjoyed games of logic, and with a lot of work could even outwit the conniving seniors in the family and sometimes matched Eric in creativeness if not ruthlessness.

When the persons had taken their places, the Trial began. "Captured Vala, you stand before us in defiance of the Natural Order by learning wizardry. Explain to the court why you should not be eliminated as a threat to all nature."

The answer to that one was simple enough for Vala. "I do not stand before you of my own volition, Prosecutor. Your initial question stands only on the ground of entrapment of an otherwise uninvolved party."

There were blinks among the Judges, though the Prosecutor seemed very miffed that his opening position had been blasted in the opening tirade.

"Your involvement is manifest, Captured," the Prosecutor said smoothly. "Human Sorcerers and Sorceresses are some of the most potent arms the Humans have. We have faced their destructive ranks more than once, and their techniques match the trade listed in this book." Her first training tome was held up for the court to see.

"I have no homestead on this planet, no family or friends, no peers and no training partners," Vala replied calmly. "You may speak of my techniques matching those of other sorcerers, but my training in those techniques is not of this world, nor is my existence in its entirety."

"And you expect us to simply believe that you appeared on the front step of one of our cities by your own mastery of a _**Gate**_ spell? I was not born yesterday, child," the Prosecutor bade to remind Vala of her (relative) youth.

"I, no sir, I know I am still well short of mastering such high-level temporal magics," Vala countered. "I do not question the mastery of a Goddess in such regards."

Her comment caused an active stir among the Judges, and a blank stare from the Prosecutor. "Are you trying to obfuscate this Trial, or are you mocking us?"

"What manner of proof would you accept as physical evidence of my claim?" Vala asked in serene counter.

The answer came from the white-haired Dragon Judge, whom except for the near-white hair would have been indistinguishable from a normal man in his present form. "If you have a device enchanted by a God or Goddess, I will accept this as fact," the Dragon said. "Something...metallic."

"Leave it to a Dragon to smell precious metals in the area," the Prosecutor grumped. "Well, have you such a device?"

"I will reveal this only on your assurance that I have it returned; I know I cannot understand your speaking without it."

"It will not be harmed," the Prosecutor replied.

"It will be returned, Prosecutor," the same Dragon Judge said.

"Yes, it will be returned, on my honor," he replied grudgingly. Vala could sense the old Prosecutor did not see eye to eye with the Dragon, and what was showing was only the tip of their argument.

Vala still hesitated for a moment before she drew the Enhancer Ring from her finger. "This ring was given to me by the Goddess Verthandi, the Fate of the Present Times from the Northlands." She audibly dropped the ring onto the table on the flat edge, which both made a sound and identified the object to the viewers. Within three seconds, it was visible to everyone in the room, and with that visibility anyone who could sense the magic aura of the ring knew immediately it was a very powerful device.

"Tell us your story, Vala Atrebas, and why a Goddess would bequeath you such a ring and displace you here," the female Nymph Judge requested in Greek. Vala had not needed to touch the ring when she began speaking, for she could easily understand what was said.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

If, in the confines of a reader's mind, the cheeriest point of this chapter happens to be the kangaroo court that Vala was wrung through, then I think I did my job right on this chapter.

Strangely enough, this chapter is not intended as 'take a level in grimdark', though after rereading it a few times that is how it comes off to me. Not intentional on my part, but not an impossible outcome given the subject matter involved. Of course, dark or light are all subjective; as I have said before (in the Jokers Wild arcs), I am but a broker of events in this story, what it reads as is wholly dependent on what the reader brings to the story and what they interpret from the content.

Herein you are starting to see the actual operations of the rebel groups and the operational outcomes. This being said, I will be the first to say that it doesn't look pretty by any major definition of the word. This is intended; Tabitha's rebel cell in particular is not exactly stocked with people overloaded with sympathy, though there is quiet restraint in their actions. They don't do these things for love of the doing, they do it because they need to be done. These things will come back to haunt the unit over the long run, but it may be the only thing that keeps the unit from folding in the short term.

Also, I should note that some of the rebels aren't 100 percent straight in the mental department. You see one good clear case of that in this chapter, in the sniper incident, and again I should point out the deliberate nature of such a happenstance. The name should be a bit of a telltale on the matter: Nicole _Whitman_. I'll leave it up to ye readers to discern how that is a telltale, and what the potential is here.

My beta reader, **Necroblade**, pointed out that he thinks this is going to end badly for just about everyone involved, and I agree with him. I cite history itself as example: over the past 350 years, there have been many revolutions and resistance movements, but not many of them were 'civil' in common parlance of the world. In point of fact, it is far easier to name the ones that were done with overt grace and honor than it would be to name the ones that were rather bloody and brutal. In particular, the revolutions / disorders built around Marxism and its variants (socialism, communism, maoism, fascism, etcetera) are easily the bloodiest revolution actions in the annals of history by volume of casualties and/or venom of action. The imperialism mindset of the IJA and Nazis aren't particularly helping assuage the civilians involved, which only serves to make the rebellion more venomous in the long run. Blood will beget more blood, and for decades it has been bloody, with no sign of appearing to slow down.

The other thing **Necroblade** pointed out is the lack of a clear endgame on the part of the rebels. Note the apparent disconnect here between 'eliminating the Nazis' and 'what happens afterward', for that disconnect is deliberate. A lot of rebellions are begun and waged almost to completion without a clear idea what happens after the oppressing party is eliminated. Even after a fashion this can be said about the American Revolution, given the original governing concept of the new nation (the Articles of Confederation) was about as thoroughly muddled and impotent as could be made to be still functional. It took over a decade from the inception of the United States to actually hammer out the Constitution as now exists. Will this scenario end up the same? Likely not, I note the complete absence of any Madison or Washington expy in the story thus far, and Eric Atrebas is definitely not of that caliber in political terms. But, in computer programmer parlance, 'all's well that ends' applies here.

My intent is to show these things as no measure of roses and rainbows. Just as the overarching theme of the story is as grim as it can get (assured annihilation in the Days of Ragnarok), the intervening time will not be pretty by any measure of the word. The endgame of the rebellion looks grim thus far, and that is also of clear intent. What comes out of this will probably not be pretty, especially depending on the intervening events between now and the disbanding of the Nazi and IJA empires. In short, when Verthandi said that no member of the Atrebas family would have it easy, but Eric would have the most hellish time of all, she was not joking. And this shit is only beginning.

That's it for this chapter. Next chapter up is probably going to be Archangel's Amazing Adventures, it seems to be in the lead for material written right now. Also expect another chapter of Dilemma of Flay Allster in the near future, and I am working on the new material for the Set 2 of Jokers Wild.

NEXT UP: Eric is displaced by circumstance once again, leading to an encounter that will forever change the course of the rebellion efforts on planet.

* * *

Review Replies: four reviews on the last chapter. Here stand my public replies:

**Alex Yamato**: I hope the dream sequence (slightly tweaked for circumstance) lives up to your expectations.

The Nazis now have a very clear idea something is wildly wrong in Sao Paulo, and even the IJA now have confirmation it was not a natural event, but they have no hard intel on what is causing it. That failing point is going to cost them casualties.

The Terrible Trio are a fun group, and hold special significance among the Atrebas group – you will understand their true standing later in the Jokers Wild series, and how they tie into many other things...

Stay tuned for more, the next will probably be in AAA. Jokers Wild 2 is in the works officially now.

**Etienne Of The West Wind**: Darkness is in no short supply in these lands, but in all things there is balance. To what manner that balance exists and will be manifest, I leave it up to guessing for now.

**Necroblade**: I still need to send you that Character random gen sheet. Give me a few and I'll message you that info.

You make a very good point about the difference between 'eliminating the oppressors' and 'forming a new world government' in both your beta notes for this chapter and in referenced review to last chapter. As I said prior, this is a bit of shortsightedness on Eric's part, and in the long run it will cost him some serious pain and angst. Of course, no 'normal' procession of events would ever lead to the existence of a Star Empire such as the Multimages. This is deliberate on my part.

**MantaArms1989**: The problem with doing anything more extravagant in this case would have been blowing Eric's cover. The concealment is paramount; without his operational invisibility, Eric is nothing more than another target for the Nazis to hunt down and exterminate. With the concealment, so long as the Nazis don't get lucky Eric can just outright slaughter them indefinitely due to the attack method being mostly untraceable.

Well, rest assured that Eric has a lot of 'whoop-ass' to open on oppressing parties, but it is not his primary job per se. Keep in mind that eliminating the Nazis is just one step of a larger plan to come, and after that onerous task is done the real fights begin.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: No gripes outstanding from the last chapter. As expected, much thanks to **Necroblade** for his outstanding assistance in editing copy. I have a feeling the Cerberus Syndrome this chapter invokes may elicit a few...

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): _Panzerfaust_ (German) translates literally to 'Armor Fist'. It is the first truly disposable anti-armor rocket launcher ever manufactured in quantity by any party, and would serve as inspiration for the M79 LAW (US) and RPG-7 (Soviet), though for different aspects in each weapon. Note that at this point in the story, the Panzerfaust is technically an outdated weapon, but is still in use because it is cheap, disposable, and very easy to manufacture.

(2): **sea lanes of communication** refers to the gap of sea between two masses of land that is normally used for naval transport. It is a common misconception in the days of heavy air transport to assume that an advanced military flies everything it needs to the objective location. Almost all actual large-force military transport is handled by large transport ships, not by aircraft. This may be slower, but an aircraft can move at most a platoon of tanks in one go, where most transport ships of the type can move an entire brigade plus necessary supply transports.

(3): **Two-File** road is in reference to two lanes; in this case, the road they are near is a moderate-traffic four-lane divided highway with an 'island' in the center. The term **two-file** refers to the old term **rank and file**, whereby a rank is a row and a file is a column.

* * *

Included Works:

**FROM PRIOR CHAPTER** (*Not listed)

GAMES:

—Wolfenstein 3D: The Ur-example of early first person shooters gives unto the world plenty of Nazi-killing fun, but also two pretty nasty baddies: Hans Grosse and Trans Grosse. Hans and Trans will both show up in the story, with Hans making himself known here for drug busting operations, Trans will show at a later time.

**FROM CURRENT CHAPTER**:

ANIME:

—(General Anime / Multiple): Mikos (Shrine Maidens). Though only appearing in one section in this chapter, the Mikos will play a significant role over the coming sections. Unlike may portrayals in anime, these Mikos are not present for pervert content.

—(General Anime / Multiple): Multiple otherwise unnatural hair/eye color combinations. So far only one combination exists, and that almost unnoticeable: Anita Rockholm, Nicole's spotter, has light blue hair and albino eyes due to genetic tinkering on the part of the Nazis. The hair was the intended effect; the eyes went albino as a side effect of their modifications.

* * *

Spell Registry:

—**Dark Void**: MinDR of 27.500, no material component required, no targeting limitation. One of the series of 'Pure Energy Shell' spells, Dark Void simply creates a shell of energy on the target location or object with the intent of disintegrating the target by pure energy transfer. Against non-biologic targets, this has the effect of vaporizing the material in question inside the shell radius, though at lower levels of DR the actual material vaporized is hard to notice. Against biologic targets, these spells will target the water molecules in the body first, followed by carbon-chain molecules, then more advanced elements and polymers. To an onlooker, it would seem as if the targeted being was turning to dust in the wind, when in reality the vapor content in their body was being bled off as the remaining molecules were broken down to smaller and simpler forms. The Dark Void spell is notorious for leaving a blue-purple stain on physical objects not completely destroyed, though this is not a hard-and-fast guarantee; titanium, when attacked by a Dark Void or Dark Column spell, tends to leave a bright blue-and-white pile of flakes of remnant material, just as one example among many aberrations. Additionally, even a brief exposure to the energy of the shell will impart energy to the target object, which will continue to consume the exposed object until the suration of the spell lapses.

MECHANICS: At the lowest level, the Dark Void spell creates a shell of 1 yard diameter. For each 10 DR increase, the shell increases in 1 yard radius. Any material inside the radius is attacked equally as per the amount of material exposed, though the higher the DR the faster and more thoroughly the targeted object is vaporized. For each 10 DR, the spell expends the equivalent of 10,000 joules per second in direct attack against the atomic structure of objects contained within. A person caught inside even the weakest form of this spell would be turned to slurry in two seconds, and converted to dust in five seconds more. The spell itself lasts 1 second for each 2.5 DR rating the originating wizard has.

—**Luminous Inferno**: MinDR of 35.000, requires a flame no smaller than a match as material component, targeted object must have an atmosphere capable of supporting combustion (oxygen or similar oxidizers) (see notes for variation). This spell, often cited as the basis of horror stories around Will 'o' The Wisp fables, produces glowing magical spheres of a combustible gel. Unlike most spells, the Luminous Inferno is a dual-element spell by its base nature, not a composite spell or multi-element-simulacrum as is seen in certain higher-level applications. The spell is natively a Light Element entity for the duration of the 'pressurization' phase of the spell and just after the luminous spheres explode. Once the inferno gel ignites, it ceases being a Light Element effect and takes on a Fire Element component as it burns itself out. While the spheres are filling with the gel, they are structurally formless and have the appearance of a sack of water being blown by the wind, except glowing bright white. As the gel pressurizes inside the spheres, it stops being moldable and takes on a spherical proportion until the spheres fail and vent the gel over the surrounding area. The contained magical gel will ignite on contact with oxygen or a suitable oxidizer; if released in an oxygen-deficient atmosphere, it will simply boil until consumed.

MECHANICS: This spell produces a minimum of 3 spheres of gel at the lowest level, and one additional sphere for each full 5 DR of the caster. The spheres each contain enough liquid to coat all objects in a foot radius of area per 10 DR; at minimum output, this amounts to slightly over a yard radius per sphere. The gel is viscous and adherent; even teleporting away from the point of attack will not remove the gel from the afflicted object. Once coated, there is a roughly two second delay before the gel ignites, at which point it will burn for no more than 90 seconds, and in higher concentrations of oxygen than normal for Earth it will burn faster than the full 90 seconds. This spell is variably targetable: the caster frames a target location in his mind for the spheres created by the spell when he is casting the spell, and at the conclusion of the chant the spheres appear where he intends them, starting from the nearest target points and moving away from the caster by distance. The maximum range for this spell is 100 yards plus 10 per DR of caster's rating.

* * *

.org/wiki/Naval_ranks_of_the_Japanese_Empire_during_World_War_II

.org/wiki/Army_ranks_of_the_Japanese_Empire_during_World_War_II


	9. Lethal Encounter

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 9: Lethal Encounter)

(27 February 2041, 1030 hours)  
(Southeastern Sao Paulo)

As evidence of the perversity of patterns in life, of the hundred or so investigative personnel in the area only about fifteen were actually doing their jobs. The other eighty-five or so were standing around, gossiping about the event or in one case talking with a street bum that had witnessed the strike today. Of course, the investigators that were simply bullshitting were the ones eating the doughnuts, leaving scant pickings for the actual working investigators.

"What did we get this time?" Chief Inspector Kenijiro Tanaka asked after his working men approached from their inspections of the strike scene.

"Area is discharged so it is safe to approach if you want to, sir," the senior inspector said. "Lightning strike, directly to the head. It was not pretty."

"The finger of God has pointed at another of our Whermacht brothers," one of the Junior Inspectors groused. "It has left a wife without a husband, and a son without a father." Said family members of the deceased were present at the scene, but were mercifully not involved in the attack. They had planned to meet him five minutes after the time of the lightning strike, but had arrived to find his decapitated and smoldering body on the sidewalk. Thankfully the wife/widow had the sense not to approach, or she would have been electrocuted by the remaining voltage in the ground surrounding him.

"Another day, another casualty," the Chief Inspector said. "These attacks are increasing in frequency, but not all are the finger of God as you pointed out."

"What are you thinking, _sensei_?"

"Some kind of demon, _Kitsune_ or similar. All the attacks involve fire, explosions, or lightning, except for one that was an aberration," he mused. "That makes me believe that we are facing a fox demon attuned to fire and/or lightning, or possibly more than one creature for each alignment."

"A fox-demon? Would that not be painfully obvious to anyone who saw it?"

"Not necessarily," the lead inspector answered for the chief inspector. "You should know the old tales as well as I. They can assume human form and do many things with mystic powers. Best we tread carefully, or we will be joining them," he indicated the bagged body of the deceased Nazi officer, but in reality meant all the personnel that had been killed by ways that were not normal for this area.

"And if we do find it?" an older but still junior-ranked inspector asked.

"If you find it, maintain your distance and observe. Find habits or weaknesses we can use against it. Do not risk yourselves in blatant self-sacrifice moves that will not achieve anything of note."

"_Hai_!" More than a few of the investigators said. A goodly amount of them began moving away from the crime scene, looking forward to scouring the city inside and out for the believed demon that was terrorizing the occupying forces.

"Do you really believe that?" a Waffen-SS officer asked in his native Japanese.

The Chief Inspector shrugged. "At this point, it is the only thing that makes a damn bit of sense. We are good, but even we advanced Japanese and Germans cannot readily call lightning strikes of this size." Special generators and setups could be used to generate a 'short spark' of 500K volts in controlled circumstances, which was close to natural lighting in the same fashion that a hand grenade was 'close' to a 500-pound bomb. "Not to even mention those glowing fire sacs that spread something similar to napalm. I'll admit the dark spot is an aberration, but I'll settle for one stray result in my theory."

The Waffen-SS officer chuckled grimly. "It is a sad state of affairs to be beholden to something so nebulous, so inconceivable as a demon on the loose. Still, I'd like a round or two with this 'demon' once we have it cornered or captured; we've lost a few good men at its hands."

The Imperial Japanese Inspector snorted. "When we find it, there will be a waiting line to take 'rounds' with it. If it is _Kitsune_ or _Inari_, it will likely be female, and that will generate a longer line still...before we kill it, of course."

The Waffen-SS officer grimaced. "It could be in the other direction just the same, _Einherjar_ or _Valkyrie_ are easily capable of this, and are just as likely to be sticking their noses in our conquests."

"Never really considered that," the Inspector groused. "Still, they are bright investigators. If they find anything in that category of problem, they know how to conduct themselves."

"I hope you're right, this threat does not give second chances – often enough, not even a first chance."

-x-x-x-

(1 March 2041, 0845 hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, abandoned commercial area)

An abandoned school served as his new residence, given that it was in an area of little activity in the district overall and that the sheer size of the school made concealment dead simple. Thus far he had identified two transients that came and went from the building, four dogs that free-roamed the area, and at least four cats – the latter he preferred to remain, as he had no love for rats or mice.

Eric had set up shop in the main office area, with his primary residence being the Principal's office, augmented with a cot from the nurse's office. The signs of looting were significant, but took less than a day for the Durgan expatriate to clean up; of particular note was the smash-and-grab mentality of whoever raided the nurse's station. Eric would have loved to do a thorough inspection and analysis on the various jars and medicines contained therein, but most had been smashed and the rest contaminated or left open to the elements, rendering the whole lot useless.

As always, the main intent of such a secluded area was the use of free time to study his spellcraft and devise new ways to achieve his objective; namely to start training recruits for the Fates. This led back to interference on the part of the Nazis, whom Eric figured he would have to eliminate until such a point that they could not threaten his operations going forward. Fortunately, the ability to eliminate them pretty close to wholesale was not something they suspected in any one man, much less the ability of a 'street bum' sitting on the ground.

"Alone in the days, I wander torn streets, living the lives denied my family," Eric recited from the song _Hidden Eyes_, a piece of defiance metal music that he found both somewhat catchy and very apt to his given circumstances. He was apt to recite lines from songs he heard from metal band concerts as he paged through tome after tome, studying methods and learning new spells. It was an unconscious habit, but one that helped him focus on his studies.

The sound of movement outside caught his attention briefly, but Eric dismissed it readily. One of the transients he shared the building with had a propensity to move through the area at random hours, and was no threat to his studies. When the sound died down Eric returned to his candles and his book on battle effect magic. Spells that slowed the enemy and their movements, spells that faltered someone's strength, provided resistances to certain magical or environmental effects, ways to compromise an enemy without outright killing them – or to make the killing strike that much easier.

The aspect of combat support spellcraft that truly had Eric's attention was the rapid scaling of such skills, at least as listed in the tome he was reading. Basic spells gained the power to affect multiple targets even during the rookie years of spellcraft training; advanced spells could affect whole battlefields or towns or even small nations when used properly. Eric had little doubt that he was not versed in such raw aptitude as of yet, though the power of the Rune Maidens made it clear that results of such power were far from impossible.

The sound outside the room resumed after a few seconds, then came to a head as something slammed into the door. It only took the persons outside (multiple, Eric could tell it was a small group) a second or two to break in, which did not bode well for them. Eric said nothing as he exchanged stares with the young man and woman who entered the room. "What the fuck is this?"

Eric idly flipped a page back, toward an interesting spell he saw that would make things much easier on him if he had to go to blade. "You deaf, old man?" another of the cohort asked.

"Deaf? No, certainly not," Eric responded with clear disinterest in their presence. "Somewhat busy, yes, quite so," he completed the thought.

"Yeah, take your busy ass somewhere else; this is our gang's building now, unless you want to become a permanent underground resident?"

Eric chuckled with an evil intonation. "No luck beating up the Nazis, so now you must vent your frustrations on an old man?" He flipped another page.

"Oh, that's gonna cost you, asshole," the front-man said with a tone to match Eric.

"Ah, 'tis what I seek," and a finger held up stopped their motion. "To whit, a line in ancient Nordic rune: _**The Stars give unto a single point their luminosity, the release of a Solar Flare**_," Eric chanted, with the tip of his raised index finger being the origin point of first a small glowing white ball, barely an inch across, followed by that ball flashing with extreme luminosity. As the caster, Eric was not affected by the spell, but everyone else in the room and nearby hallway was affected by the blinding flash.

"What the fuck?" the lead shouted in pain, his eyes seared by the blinding flash and his body turned away from Eric on reflex. "My eyes! My eyes! I can't see!"

"Be thankful that is the only part of you afflicted," Eric said calmly as he began packing his material and books up for transport. "I could have done far worse in a much shorter frame of time."

"Damnit! My eyes! I'll kill you!"

"If you are lucky, you will regain partial vision," Eric replied. "Your days of killing anyone purposefully are gone."

"What the fuck are you? Jose, can you see?"

"Why me, God, why me?" Jose shouted in response. "Your ass is burned into my sight picture! All I can see is your ass!"

Eric grimaced, as that would likely be his last sight of his life. "I bid you all luck in the coming months, as you will need to adapt to being blind. I have other things to attend to."

The Mage figured these five would be forever unable to accurately report his person to anyone, and in most circumstances they would be lauded as insane were they to report the truth. A more proper maintenance of stealth would have been to strike them all down, but blinding them would suffice for present purposes.

He had no idea that failing to kill them would cause far more trouble than the expected outcome of slaying them.

-x-x-x-

(3 March 2041, 1200 hours)  
(Northwestern Sao Paulo, Commercial District Underground Rebel Base)

Carlos stood up from kneeling, which was now a more complex task for him than it had been at any point prior in his life. The problem was not that he had forgotten how or had been injured, but was a problem of system control.

"Still having maneuver difficulties," Carlos reported. "Kneeling and standing are both clunky."

"This is art and science blended, you dipdunk machete-swinging hitman. Don't expect it to match human movements for quite some time." If Suzanne could sound any more pissed at the implicit questioning of her skills, how was lost on the few observers.

"By God, girl, you'd think I just pissed on your life's work with that kind of reaction," Carlos said.

"You just did," she responded with the same sharpness of tone.

"Arms are moving better," Calos backtracked on his criticism. "What did you change?"

"I modified the control code to cut the main processor out of the loop. Everything is now handled by the secondary movement processor for your arms, except when that is offline it is then handled by the primary."

"Can you do the same for the legs?" Carlos asked. "My arms move almost naturally, like I have ten-pound weight belts on them."

"Well, that is good; it's about the best we can expect without professional help and development services."

"I think we all need professional help," 'Iron Hand' Vladimir said to nobody in particular.

"Help me, help me," Kari Porom said in a singsong voice.

Carlos walked over to the firing range stall where he had set up an old German MG42 to test the weapons handling capabilities of the new armor. A single man could control one of the massive MG42 weapons, but they were normally crewed by no less than two and usually had three plus extra ammo-bearers. The Nazis had changed around their squad formation since the early days of their conquests, now relying on two lighter machine guns with lighter but still very-effective weapons.

"Gonna try the big thing?" Tabitha asked as she reached for her hearing protection.

"Someone has to try," Carlos said. His was not the only set of armor active right now, but he was the most comfortable in the massive and clunky armor system.

"I hope this works," Vladimir groused.

Carlos picked up the large MG42 and took a secondary grip around the barrel shroud and aimed down the fourth-floor firing range. "Okay...targeting system says I'm on, so let's see if what I see is really what I get. Fire in the hole!" After a second's delay, he ripped off a ten-round burst. "Okay, aimpoint is off to the left, how do I handle that?"

"Your command is: personal armor command system, targeting, HUD system, firearm aimpoint, adjust aimpoint left, and give a number estimate on how many mils (1) you are off."

"One moment," Carlos said. He did not move nor make any more noise for a few moments, theoretically as he gave the system command to his armor to adjust the aimpoint. "Trying again. Fire in the hole!" Another rip of ten rounds commenced, this time on a different target. "Whoo yeah! Dead on!"

"And dead accurate," Tabitha had already seen the grouping caused by his burst. "Fifty yards, ten rounds all inside the 10-ring. At four hundred yards, that's ten rounds inside a space no larger than the average _Kraut's_ head."

"The supermen are about to get a super lobotomy," Vladimir said with a chuckle. "Now all we need is to cure the rest of the motor problems and we're good to go."

"And we need to come up with some kind of blade weapon for it," Carlos opined. "I don't want to be caught with dick in armored hand if I have to go hand to hand with the Japs or Jerries."

"It is a good start, and you will have a pistol for real close work, I just need to modify one of your leg plates to hold it. You're a leftie, right?" Suzanne asked.

"Yeah, left side Suzie," Carlos replied.

"Call me 'Suzie' again and I'll test the armor resistance to _Panzerfaust_ with you in it, clear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Carlos grumped. "Left side, leg holster preferred. Can I get ten or so mags on my right side?"

"Oh, a challenge, is it?" Suzanne asked in counter. "I think I can get ten mags on there."

"How do we handle belts?" Carlos asked. "We're going to need a huge heap o' ammo to deal with the Jerries in any quantity."

"Hey, whoa, don't get the wrong idea Carlos," the oldest man in the room, Marcos Rigos, spoke up. "One man ain't takin' on a whole army. Don't get any delusions of invincibility; I did damn good in one F-16J, but I only got nine scratches before an IJA Kami-E put paid to my flying career. You're going to have the same problem out there in armor as I had in the sky: you'll wax quite a few of 'em, but it only takes one lucky bastard with an itchy trigger finger to ruin your day...maybe even permanently ruin your day."

"Sound advice," Tabitha said. "We'll plan on fighting small team operations in the armor, just the same as we do with assault operations."

"I'm gonna get some more trigger time in, make sure I'm up to snuff with it. Suzanne, I'm relyin' on you to get my legs goin' right."

-x-x-x-

(3 March 2041, 1900 hours)  
(Western-Central Sao Paulo, Heavy Commercial district)

"This is gonna be the best concert in a long time!" one of the soon-to-be patrons said.

"Sucks that Thousand Eyes was machine-gunned by Nazis, they had some kickass original works and they did a kickass Nightwish cover," a lady patron groused.

"I hear the lead of Bladefold was dating the female vocal for Thousand Eyes. Maybe they'll do a tribute piece?" the first speaker commented.

"I'll settle for them doing some of the Nightwish suite," the lady said.

"Huh? Him again?" a third voice said. "Hey, bum-dude!"

"What?" Eric could recognize when a question was directed at himself. "Who? Me?" he asked for clarification.

"Why don't you come in and listen, instead of hearing it muffled out here?" a young lady asked.

"You are listening to them, are you not?" A guy asked.

"I am," Eric admitted.

"C'mon, I'll pay you in," a barely-teen girl said.

"I would consider it an honor," Eric said as he stood to join the three concert-groupies. He had little hard currency of his own from these lands, due in no small part to his inability to find decent make-work or mercenary tasks. Thankfully, his wizardry provided for his actual sustenance needs and prevented the need to steal to maintain his diet.

"Dude, you're like the creepiest goth-looking bum I've ever dealt with. You'd fit in with this crowd, no doubt," the eldest of the males in the group said.

_I learned how to do Goth from the entities that would eventually go on to become the Goths in this history_, Eric thought but did not say. "My thanks," he directly replied to the comment.

"So, what's your story?" the young lady asked.

"Was a farmer, years ago," Eric answered in proper form of his cover legend. "Nazis destroyed my farm, stole my livestock and slayed my family. No way to rebuild my farm, so I came here looking for work. Now I wander the streets, trying to get back in." He meant 'back in to the system', mostly in reference to the common propensity of bums to be 'outside the system' due to their circumstances and lack of proper identification. Once you were shoved out, there were few legitimate ways back in, or so said the bums around town.

"That sucks big donkey dicks," the youngest man commented dryly.

"Three?" the bouncer at the door asked, requesting the number in the party.

"Four, including the big guy," the lady said, jerking her thumb at Eric. She presented enough money to cover the entry fee.

"Hold," the bouncer stopped Eric with an outstretched hand. "They're jail-bait, _amigo_. Keep it on the level."

It did not take Eric much to understand what he was referring to. "I hold no such intentions," he replied simply. "Far too young for my tastes and too brash."

"Ah, well, you'll probably find a few bar-flies in here more to your liking, then," the bouncer said. "Just be careful. Not all is as it first appears."

"Clear," Eric said before he entered. He followed the three teens to their choice table in the back of the room.

"Drinks?" a waitress requested.

"Black Russian," the three teens all asked for.

"You, sir?" she asked Eric.

Eric had no experience in beverages of this location or era, so he decided to go along with their request. "I will have the Black Russian as well, only include the alcohol content in mine that you would leave out of theirs," Eric said, knowing the local barmaids' propensity to serve drinks to underage patrons that lacked the full list of ingredients.

"Not without a clear idea that you're above 18, _amigo_," she answered.

Eric nodded under his hood, then pulled the robe hood back to reveal his head. "Answer enough, milady?"

"Wow, yes," she said with a clear twinkle in eye. "Sorry, I couldn't guess on your voice. No offense."

"You really do look older than you sound," the young lady said. "How old are you?"

"Not the least bit reserved about asking such questions?" Eric asked with an obvious tone of humor to voice. She flushed, but did not look away for more than a bare second. "Somewhere older than 33, I believe."

"Why do you listen?" the oldest male's finger pointed to the band on stage.

"Their songs tell of old tales and new," Eric said. "Something about it...magnetic, addictive." The band began powering up their gear, a sound that Eric could easily recognize. "They begin," he said before he pulled a tome from under his robe and one of the 'new' pens he had acquired from the school. These automatic pens made writing far easier and faster, which was helpful when recording metal music.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen!" The crowd roared their acknowledgment to the speaker, one who held a guitar and was generally at the front of the band. "We are Bladefold, and we welcome you all to our 39th live concert. We will begin tonight with one of our earliest power metal works; this is '_Knight's Rage_'."

A cheer came from the crowd as the song began slow; Eric expected the slow begin to this genre of songs, and expected the pace to pick up quickly enough. His pen perked up when the first strains of the wired guitar began.

_Horses in steel, hooves of fire,  
Swords readied, chances are dire!_

Eric wrote out the lyrics quickly, thankful that the teens were paying attention to the band and not his writing in Norse runes (his fastest calligraphy, given his decade-plus practice with it in spellcraft matters). The tome he was writing into would record what he heard but more to the point would also record the absolute sound of the band and would also give a copy of the song that represented the 'true' version in Existence, whatever that referred to. The three recorded versions were markedly different, but just as entertaining as Eric could ever wish for; the 'true' version was even more stunning than the live versions in most cases.

_God and King, stand aside,  
The Knights march today;  
Campaign built on a thousand lies,  
Ten hundred men unto the fray!_

A sharp sound from the guitar presaged what Eric could guess would be the chorus of the song. He was not disappointed in the medley of the instruments, nor the easily-understood lyric lines.

_No glory, no honor, no word of the Lord,  
Men speak of the Knight's duty as a gauge;  
No story, no love, no hope for a reward,  
Men don't speak of the Knight's Rage_!

A short medley on the guitar broke up the song's lyric sets, giving Eric a few moments to catch up in his transcription. The drums in the background of the music reminded Eric of marching drums to an eerie level of similarity; given the subject of the song, Eric doubted it was unintentional.

_Hundreds of knights, thousands of men,  
The Kings call to battle, the common man answers;  
thousands of hooves, stomp flat a glen,  
'Site the Archers, prepare shields, charge ye lancers!'_

_One field, two armies, three regiments,  
Three commands, two arrow volleys, one decisive clash!_

The sound of the drums picked up to a frenetic pace, more so than the remaining instruments. The random nature of the drums made Eric think it was free-form, but also brought to mind the times he had been in battle and the random, hectic nature of the engagement. If it was the intended effect, Eric figured they had done a good job with the semi-martial music and the theme of the song thus far.

_Troops march, boots shaking the ground,  
Spears are leveled, the Knights wheel around,  
A piece of mercy, nowhere to be found,  
Thousands of clashes, many men death-bound!_

_One field, two armies, three regiments,  
Three commands, two arrow volleys, one decisive clash!_

The squeal of the guitar could naught but presage the coming of the chorus, which Eric figured would be appropriate for this point in the song. The lyric was simplistic but definitely poignant; a call to glory would follow the romantic method, but this was far grittier a work, far more realistic in terms of what happened even before the era of knights.

_No glory, no honor, no word of the Lord,  
Men speak of the Knight's duty as a gauge;  
No story, no love, no hope for a reward,  
Men don't speak of the Knight's Rage_!

The last segment was presaged by a slowdown in the song tempo and the vocals shifting to the secondary for the band, the non-lead guitar player.

_Sword and bow, mace and pike,  
Hundreds die in the blink of an eye;  
Gone and forgotten, the final strike,  
Your silver armor does not make your King right!_

The song retreated into the chorus once more, the final echoes of the overarching thought of the song. Eric made sure to continue his transcription faithfully; deviation from what was said and heard would produce a different effect and ultimately would refer to a different song, something Eric did not want at least at present. If this was to be the final rites of this band, as had his recording of Thousand Eyes been when they were executed in weeks past, he wanted it to be accurate.

_No glory, no honor, no word of the Lord,  
Men speak of the Knight's duty as a gauge;  
No story, no love, no hope for a reward,  
Men don't speak of the Knight's Rage_!

_No glory, no honor, no word of the Lord,  
Men speak of the Knight's duty as a gauge;  
No story, no love, no hope for a reward,  
Men don't speak of the Knight's Rage_!

"How did you like that one, old farmer dude?" the younger of the two male teens asked him.

"An interesting melody," Eric said. "Haunting for its own reasons, with enough of a hint of hope to not be completely depressing."

"Hope? Of what?"

"A solution to the Knight's problems," Eric answered calmly, thinking of multiple ways in which such a lesson could be played out – and was being played out.

Eric would have considered himself fool to not notice the eyes that were alternating between the band and himself. A few pair, like the eyes of the teens he was seated with, were innocent. The rest were less than innocent, and Eric knew this clearly. Even the eyes of the waitress who brought him a drink were less than innocent, though Eric figured hers a case of more than one thing all at once.

-x-x-x-

(4 March 2041, 1330 hours)  
(Western-Central Sao Paulo, Heavy Commercial district)

"Ah, The Russian comes," the proprietor of the nightclub said. "We have need of your services, comrade, come, come!"

"What have you dredged up this time?" Vladimir asked quietly.

"An IJA agent, trying to narc on the concert-goers from last night. She was hanging with two guys and a street bum way older than her." A picture of the four was handed to Vladimir.

"I recognize the bum, he's a frequent inhabitant of the alleyways and byways of the area. I don't know exactly where he rests his head, but I know for a fact he is not IJA or Nazi. He's been shot by them more than once."

"That's pretty good reason not to like them," the proprietor said. "Also makes for pretty good cover."

"If he pops up again, I'll question him," Vladimir Pevlekov approached the teen girl and folded his arms across his chest. "What's your story?"

"Just doing my duty," the girl said quietly.

"And what is your duty?" Vladimir asked.

"Vodka, sir?" the main waitress asked.

"_Gracias_," Vladimir answered in his most literate Spanish. "So, you going to answer my question, girl?"

"My duty is to report subversives, what about it?" she replied with a sharp tone.

"What about it?" Vladimir asked rhetorically. "You would have a hundred people killed, for what?"

"I don't expect you to understand it," she replied.

"Try me, kid. I'll wager two shots of Smirnoff I can understand it." Vladimir received his requested drink just as he was proposing the bet.

"Subversives aren't people, they're animals to be controlled and culled before they get real people killed," she answered after a few moments of silence.

"You lose," Vladimir replied after a second. "I've heard and understood that one before, it's the typical IJA party line. You're either a Japanese Citizen or you're a sub-human and an unperson. Still, you should get a consolation prize. Get her a vodka, mid-shelf, please," Vladimir requested of the waitress. "Now, you were at the concert with an unusual fellow, a street bum I believe. Tell me about him."

"Just a bum, another lowlife who can't get back into the system. Former farmer, blames the Germans for his family's death and the destruction of his farm."

"May even be right about it," Vladimir said. "What else about him?"

"The waitress behind you has a crush on him," she said snidely.

"Like hell!" the waitress in question answered. "If I had a crush on every good-looking thirty-something that walked in those doors, I'd have a different cock every day of the year. Trust me on this, I don't get that much."

"What else about him?" Vladimir asked.

"He's incredibly fit and rugged, which is probably why she was attracted to him. Probably never see him again," she said to the waitress.

"I run into him about once a week," Vladimir said. "Tracking him down would not be difficult in the slightest."

"Her shot of Orloff," the waitress said after she set the drink down next to her.

"I can't think of anything left to ask her, can you?" Vladimir asked the proprietor.

"Is your reporting detail one of those IJA things, or is it just go to school and tell the counselor?"

"School," she answered evenly.

"Fair enough," Vladimir said. "You want that shot, or not?"

"Sure," she said. Vladimir signaled for the proprietor to cut her hands loose so she could partake of the shot. He would give at least that to the clearly deluded teen before he executed her.

"Your call on what we salute," Vladimir prompted as he held up his second shot.

"To decency and honor," she said before she hoisted her shotglass. Vladimir said the same before he downed his in one gulp. "Now what?"

Vladimir chuckled. "Decency and honor, is it?" The Spetsnasz waved off the waitress behind her, who was about to use a piano-wire garrote on the teen. "For a day, I'll prove to you that we 'subversives' are a measure better than the IJA and Nazi mass-murderers you so look up to. You have some brig space?"

"Yeah, easy enough," the proprietor said. "I don't exactly like keeping live stoolies around, though. Too much risk."

"I thought Soviets were the hard-liners on dealing with espionage," the head waitress noted.

"Hard-liners, yes, Spetsnasz even more so. There's a difference between being a soldier and a monster, and I'm trying to avoid the second."

"He has a point. Take her down to the brig."

"And if she gets loose?" the head waitress asked.

"You know what to do," Vladimir replied.

-x-x-x-

(7 March 2041, 2230 hours)  
(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Brazil, border of residential and industrial area)

The days since the incident at the abandoned school had not left Eric with a decent 'permanent' residence; pretty much by the day, he wandered across the western half of town looking for abandoned territory. Even with the depredation of the Nazis, this was not the simplest of tasks; since as rapidly as someone was evicted from a building, others would take possession of the building and pick up where they left off.

This often created opportunities for Eric that he had no idea existed until he saw them in action. Being a man of ancient times tended to play hell with his understanding of how the world had changed and how modern technology was reliant on things that he would be unable to understand for years. This being said, Eric was not adverse to learning in these matters; he did not see himself leaving this planet for some time, if at all, and thus had a lot to learn.

The apartment in which he intended to rest was used by a pair of bums, but the balcony itself was unused and Eric was not adverse to sleeping out under the stars for a change. The balcony was an older one, not built with a solid wall around it but with wrought iron rod banisters. Four floors from the ground, Eric had clear view to the area and especially clear view to a fueling station and truck park across the road. It traded in a very busy sale of fuel, given its position on one of the main highways into town, but it also had a rather unsavory crowd of wenches that Eric would not have pleasured with the haft of a pike. Such persons lent credence to a new term that Eric had picked up: "Crack Whores."

It took an hour before the sound of truck engines stopped being a unique noise and began being a soothing aural vibration. There were subtle differences between the various trucks, though a few of the trucks made noises that stirred Eric a few times. For a while after the sun set and the twilight faded, Eric did sleep and sleep reasonably well for an otherwise noisy area.

A new sound woke him after an indeterminate time, the sound of an engine wildly different from the other trucks. It was enough to rouse him and look at the offending vehicle, and Eric found himself very shocked at the revelation. The vehicle in question was a military truck not dissimilar from what the Nazis used to move troops around the town. The markings on the cover over the loadbed were distinctly Japanese, though it was too dark and the angle of view was wrong for Eric to properly read the kanji on the side.

"Not a threat, not my problem, not my action," Eric groused before he rolled over to present his back to the transport vehicle. With that done, he settled down to go back to sleep, but was stirred out of his reverie by the sound of a metallic click noise. He looked past the edge of his bedding and down through the metal grating to the ground below him. Two persons lurked in the shadows, both holding some form of tube with a bulbous end on one side and a flaring end on the other side. As one, the two persons stood up from a crouching position, then aimed the bulbous end at the truck park. The sound of the device was deafening, akin to that of a F_**ireball**_ spell at the least, though the effect when the weapon struck the target was just the same.

The blast was not enough to sunder the vehicle, nor was it ample to ignite the vehicle, but the contents of the load bed was another story entirely. It only took three seconds for the material transported within to react to the weapons used – the reaction was itself more akin to a _**Fireball**_ spell in both effect and devastation, as the contents detonated in spectacular fashion. This blast shredded the truck and the two transport personnel that came from its control seats, but more to the point it did collateral damage. The blasts threw asunder the remainder of the contents in the load bed, some of which continued to detonate after it scattered and landed. A few nearby trucks were damaged, but the one that truly caused Eric to fret was a truck with a tanker trailer. It took an object to the side of the tank, which caused its liquid contents to begin gushing out onto the ground nearby the smoldering object. The flame graphic on the end of the tank only presaged the coming nightmare.

"SHIT! SHIT! SHIIIIITTTT!" the driver of the tanker was barely heard to shout over the din of the burning material. That he was running speedily away from the tanker in question was ample warning to Eric that seriously bad things were about to happen.

"Not good," Eric groused to himself.

The liquid content did not take more than a sundry few ticks of the lighted clock at the fuel station to catch fire. Once the fire was begun, it did not take long for the flames to travel to the source of the liquid and travel up the stream of liquid, though even in the distance Eric could tell the flames never approached more than a hand's distance to the actual tank itself. Of course, the lake of fire caused indirectly by his actions only spread around the lot, slowly creeping toward other trucks. The more savvy of drivers were quick to get their transports moving, as the station itself evacuated of civilian vehicles almost without hesitation.

"The cost for this one was far too high," the Mage muttered to himself. "I will need to be wary of what I target henceforth, lest I make the same mistake."

The arrival of the white-and-red emergency response crews was a relief to Eric, but it was not a relief without innate remorse; at least one body could be readily identified that was not targeted by the attack. Eric re-swore his resolve to ensure he was not going to cause such casualties by his own hands, or at least to minimize them in further operations. The glow of the flame lake reached across the fence line into the next lot, and before the emergency crews could even begin combating the blaze an industrial building was beginning to succumb to the flames.

Eric rolled over again and faced the sliding door to the apartment. It was not his operation, and he could not assist the retarding of the flames without blowing his cover, therefore he had no other recourse but to continue sleeping.

-x-x-x-

(9 March 2041, 0215 hours)  
(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Brazil, center of residential area)

Four IFVs trundled down the side-roads toward an apartment building in the distance. Each was packed to the brim with _Sturmtruppen_ and none were happy. Three other groups of four units were approaching the same building, giving a large company of infantry to clear out the apartment building of the rebels within. The best evidence of the massive fire started not too far from here pointed to this faction doing the job; one of the collateral casualties had even been one of their own men, identified by dental records after his body had been heavily charred.

"Approaching the target, _Standartenführer_ (Colonel) Grosse!" the vehicle crew leader shouted over the roar of the gas turbine engine. "Do we begin suppressing fire on the building?"

"Negative, the first warning I want them to have is the first grenades as we breach and clear," Karl Grosse answered. "Stand by for orders to clear rooms as we go."

"_Jawhol, herr Standartenführer_!"

"Listen up, all infantry on this band!" Karl Grosse began. "This is a clean sweep operation. Room by room, flashbang in, kill any armed resistance, secure anyone else. No mercy if they show resistance. Questions?"

"_Nien, herr_ _Standartenführer_!" one of the squad Sergeants replied immediately.

"Ten seconds!" With that final warning, the sound of a squad's worth of firearm bolts slammed forward to chamber rounds echoed through the IFV. Two were semi-automatic shotguns, four were assault rifles, and one was a light machine gun, a fairly standard squad for a building assault.

The IFV lurched to a halt before the doors popped open pneumatically with the press of a button from the vehicle crew chief's seat. Colonel Grosse was the last one out of the APC by insistence of his squad, though he was quick to move up with the team instead of hang back with the vehicles. He had no problems commanding from a distance, but he liked getting his hands dirty in small-scale engagements as a reminder of what the operations looked like from the up-close-and-personal perspective. His own assault rifle would likely also be used today, part duty to the Fatherland and part refresher on the necessities of battle and the duties.

"_Herr_ _Standartenführer_, stand by as we breach and make initial entry," two enlisted soldiers took position between him and the main door. A pair of combat engineers moved up to the doors with satchel charges, as it was obvious that they had barricaded the doors.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" the Sappers shouted before they detonated the five kilos of plastic explosives in contact with the door. The blast was significant and likely woke everyone in the building that was not already awake, but such was the cost of entering the structure. The lead troops prepared and threw in flashbang NFD (2) grenades to squelch any resistance nearby the front door as they entered. Gunfire erupted from somewhere inside the door, though it was only temporary as the lead troops entered and used their infrared vision systems to target the rebels in the dark building.

The rattle of assault rifles changed timbre as the troops moved in and began clearing the individual apartments. There was sporadic gunfire from upper levels of the building, but those apartments that fired upon the troops outside were easily singled out for 25mm cannon fire from the APCs. A pair of rounds were used in each case, never more, lest they generate undue collateral damage and threaten the lives of uninvolved civilians. Killing a retired factory worker in the wrong apartment was generally frowned upon, not so much for the casualty as it was for the perception of wrongdoing, and perception was always a problem for the victor.

Karl Grosse moved forward with the two infantrymen in tow, always moving at angles and avoiding situations whereby he would be outlined by the open doors or windows. He had to step gingerly over the remnants of a sofa, thoroughly shredded by the blast from the satchel charges, though he could also recognize body parts mixed in with the wood frame and fluff. Someone had been nearby the barrier before the blast was set off, though Karl was not the first with the question of the early morning: "Who gave them forewarning?"

"I don't know, _Untersturmführer_ (Lieutenant), but you'll be the first to know after me," Colonel Grosse answered as he approached the stairs headed up to the second of four floors. "One squad on me!" The order from the _Standartenführer_ was more than ample to get the attention of the combat engineers assigned to the operation. "Lead off, soldiers, we will begin clearing the second floor." The two soldiers that had taken the initiative of guarding the Colonel began up the stairs, but immediately Karl stopped them before they took two steps. "Boy, what is your name?" Karl asked as he hauled the errant soldier down to the ground floor again.

"Gustav Fedelle, _Sturmmann_, sir!" he reported.

"How long ago was your last run through MOUT training, son?" (3)

"I have never been through it, _herr_ _Standartenführer_, I was transferred out of my last unit before training and into this one just after their last refresher, sir!" the private replied.

"Well, son, time for a crash course. First, always stay with your buddy. Even when I dragged you down, you should have immediately moved to his side. Do it now," Colonel Grosse ordered. "Second, never leave your buddy and never let yourself or your buddy go somewhere alone. This ain't a job for cheap heroics, that gets you sent home in horizontal sealed packaging, clear?"

"Clear, _Standartenführer_ Grosse!"

"Now, follow close on your buddy and when you go up or down stairs, you always stay to the outside of the stairs. Makes you harder to hit from higher or lower levels. Now move out!"

The SS stormtroopers moved up the stairs, this time in a fashion that Karl did not find dissatisfying, and began to fan out when they arrived on the second level. The corridor spread out to the left and right, forming a 'T' intersection with the stairs, and immediately the troops took aim down both sides.

Karl was looking north down one of the branches when he heard a jarring cry from behind him. "AMBUSH!" One of the engineers shouted.

_Standartenführer_ Karl Grosse never had a chance to turn around and face the rebels. He was struck by an old Soviet RPG-7 anti-tank rocket, a weapon not expressly designed for anti-personnel work but wildly effective at it in the right hands. The rocket struck him in the body armor over the small of his back, penetrated a half-inch even as the nosecone crushed in on itself, then the warhead detonated. Its blast and fragmentation was less overall than a hand grenade, but it was no less lethal to Karl and the two soldiers nearest him.

For him the world flashed white as his body was sundered by the shockwave of the blast, then nothing remained of his sensory inputs. The building would eventually be taken by the Waffen-SS, but only after three days of floor-to-floor fighting.

-x-x-x-

(1945 hours, 16 March 2041)  
(Northwestern Commercial District, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

The depredations of the IJA and Wehrmacht over the past weeks had stepped up due to the perception that someone in the ghetto had killed multiple IJA officers and the leftover fury of the demise of Karl Grosse. Eric had been witness to their clean-out tasks, and was spared their ministrations due to being able to conceal himself with invisibility. It was a cruel form of survival, watching the IJA walk past him within touching range and not one noticed his presence, even in two cases they dragged persons by him for 'interrogation'. Some came back, others were never seen again; it did not take Eric much in the way of imagination to guess at their fates.

On the other hand, Eric had turned a pair of investigators into _**stone shard**_ pincushions; they had made the task dead simple, prowling at night in a poorly-lit area, with their hand-held searching lights unable to penetrate his invisibility. When daylight next touched their bodies, dogs had been chewing on their carcasses and the IJA was reminded that something else in the area was doing far more harm to them than a simple bum. With that one action, the 'investigations' in the area ceased their prior timbre of street pickups (few of which collected transients returned to the streets) and maintained his stealth.

Of course, for they, a different manner of 'investigation' was entirely possible. Thus, Eric found himself drawn toward the periphery of a crowd, one that was not too happy with the subject of their beholding.

"Don' go, man, don' go, they lookin' for targets," a bum said as Eric passed his resting spot.

"I am no target," Eric replied simply, though he did slow down his approach to ensure he did not draw undue attention. In due time he was in his preferred concealment spot, sitting down with his back against a wall to observe what was coming.

"What the fuck is this?" someone in the growing crowd asked. "What did they do?"

"Nothing," a young lady replied from nearby the original speaker. "Not a damn thing."

"Then—" the Type 22 SMGs were raised and four troops loosed a burst each, silencing the wails of the four persons against the wall. The man collapsed straight down and forward, his shirt a bloody mess. The lady fell askance, with her dress having lost a strap from a stray round and now showing her bust in death to the rest of the world. The son simply slid down the wall and coughed up blood, not entirely deceased from their ministrations; a single shot to the head finished him off. The young daughter (Eric estimated her at five years age, six at the latest) died in the most messy of fashion among the four, with at least two rounds to the head having removed the left side of her skull. "Dude! No fucking way!"

"Way," the same young lady replied, easily heard by Eric because he knew when it was coming and knew to shield his ears.

"DEMON! HEAR ME!" the IJA Investigator commanding the squad of soldiers shouted. "Come forth, or I will find another family to kill in front of you, and another, and another, until I have depopulated this city or you show yourself!"

"Your ass is cooked," Eric groused under his breath. "_**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of forever with an arc of Lightning**_," Eric chanted as quietly as possible, his eyes locked on the Investigator and specifically her face.

The lightning bolt – from a clear and starry sky no less – struck true on the top of her head. The arc was too fast for mortal eyes to see in transit, but Eric knew it worked as advertised on her body. One track of lightning went down her right side, through her right leg, and into the ground; the other went through her left arm, jumped an air gap, and terminated in a nearby subordinate and crippled him by way of cooking the lower part of his spine. The seconds thereafter assaulted the crowd with the notable overpressure and short heat wave of the lightning strike; many simply shouted their protest at the abuse of their ears, but others were still stoically silent about the matter.

Eric was not yet through with his ministrations, however; he wanted to drive home the point that baiting 'this demon' would cause more than just a random casualty. Already her subordinates were panicked, but they broke morale when the glowing spheres of _**Luminescent Inferno**_ appeared around them. One was foolhardy enough to run through a sphere of pressurized liquid as it was growing, which immediately detonated that sphere and doused him in the holy chemical that ignited into a white-hot inferno a second later. For a few seconds, the crowd cheered at the sight of an IJA human torch running around wildly, lighting the area as bright as day in his death. The other spheres filled and detonated as appropriate, which also gave funeral pyres to the deceased even though no other IJA personnel became casualty to Eric's actions.

Many of the people in the crowd took to one knee, uttering sincere prayers to God for the deceased family and for the slaughter of three more IJA personnel. Eric did not join them in prayer, though he did pay attention to a young lady that ran past where he was sitting, still crying about the incident. It was about the time she passed the other bum in the alley that he realized she intended to go right at the first intersection – and thereby put herself at the mercy of the _Los Lobos_ street gang behind the nearby building.

-x-

Kari cringed as she always did to the sound of a Type 22 SMG, this time all the more so that she was in close proximity to the deceased family. On the left flank of the crowd, a few mere meters from an alleyway and a bum who also watched the spectacle of their death, she could naught but hear their final mental echoes as they died for whatever purpose the Japanese wanted to put to them.

Answer of that purpose came shortly after the barrels stopped smoking, and the tortured groans of the boy was silenced. "DEMON! HEAR ME! Come forth, or I will find another family to kill in front of you, and another, and another, until I have depopulated this city or you show yourself!"

A five second gap of silence, punctuated only by the mental anguish and raging of the family's teen-aged daughter a meter in front of Kari, was ample to clear the mental shuddering. Despite the pain it caused her, she knew that she still held some of her humanity so long as she still felt the pain of other person's demise. What was worse to a sensitive psionic was the translated pain from a family member who had just watched her family slaughtered for the purpose of luring out this mythical 'demon' that was slaying the Nazis and IJA in droves.

The faintest echo of a thought caught her psionic attention, a strange saying: _**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of forever with an arc of Lightning**_, she barely heard over the mental din of the crowd around her. It took a fraction of a second, then the flash of lightning—and the accompanying super-stimulation of a person's mind as every neuron in their brain was charged from the strike. Some screeched against the sound and pressure of the lightning strike, but others simply stared as the investigator was killed and her immediate subordinate was crippled for life. Kari had to squint against the conflicting emotions of the investigator's demise, mainly due to the fact that her brain had run itself at warp speed before the thermal bloom of the lightning cooked it.

Kari, even still squinting against the 'flashbulb' effect of the lightning death, grabbed her brother's hand and held it firm. _What? Something wrong?_ Daniel asked telepathically of his twin sister.

_I heard something. Listen around you_, Kari directed him.

It was a few seconds before something was audible above the din, but clearly not something normally said or thought by a native Sao Paulo resident. _**Lights dance, flames of the eternal stars give rise to Luminous Inferno**_, they both heard over the jumbled and weak thoughts of the crowd.

_No way! Did someone—_

_Not so loud, brother, that hurt_, Kari requested telepathically. _Yes, it was someone; it sounded like it was to my left—but the only man to my left is a bum!_

Daniel looked past her very carefully, himself rather intent to not piss off a possible wizard. _There's a match on the ground next to him, smoldering_, he noticed with a curious flair. Why a bum not smoking would have a smoldering match nearby was mildly suspicious to him.

Kari was distracted by the surviving daughter of the family running past her, past the bum, and down the alley. It wasn't until the teen ran past a second bum halfway down the alley that the nearby bum (possible wizard?) bolted to standing with uncharacteristic speed and grace for a transient. His movements were deliberate, not hasty, another telltale to Kari that he was not as he appeared to be. _I see it too, sister_, Daniel commented inside the confines of their linked minds. _Should we follow_?

_It'll be dangerous, you remember the old saying: never meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger_, Kari recited.

"I'm in," Daniel said aloud. Without another word, the two teen Psionics began a run down the alley toward the abruptly-orphaned daughter and the possible wizard behind the chaos in the Nazi ranks.

"Crap, kids, wait for me," Tabitha knew that something was up with the two younger Psionics, but she had held her peace until they bolted down an alley. 'Iron Hand' Vladimir followed close behind Tabitha, convinced something was wrong.

The four arrived at the corner about four seconds after the bum staggered into the alley, clearly faking being too drunk to be stable.

-x-

"I'll be needing this," Eric grabbed a beer from the bum's six-pack, and with a deft motion twisted off the metal sealant cap and tossed it aside.

"Whatever, pal," the bum grunted as Eric approached the corner. A single swig was enough for his purposes for now, he only needed the illusion of intoxication for what he was about to do.

The sharp but quiet screech of the girl in question was ample to confirm Eric's fears. A quick glance around the corner provided a good idea of the obstacles and distances involved. For Eric, a dumpster on the right side of the alley provided the perfect solution so long as they didn't charge immediately. Another swig and he stepped off toward the five punks and one captured lady.

"What the fuck is this? Little teenie crying about something?" One of the punks asked as Eric entered the alley proper and feigned staggering toward the left side building.

"Looks like jailbait to me, home boys, I ain't playin' with this one," one of the younger punks said with a small hint of disgust.

"Huh? Boss, company, some drunk bum," the eldest punk said as Eric shifted again toward the right and toward the dumpster that stood between the group and himself.

Eric slammed into the dumpster with his right shoulder, though not without purpose: he used the sound of his impact to mask the sound of his sword being drawn partially. Another part of his deception came as he wheeled around the dumpster with his right shoulder against the corner and his right half concealed away from the punks: his left arm came around and the bottle impacted on the front of the dumpster, which was also timed to mask the sound of the pommel on his Gladius bouncing off the side of the dumpster in the last part of the draw. With that done, he had two feet of sword to use on four as-yet-unawares punks in defense of the orphaned daughter.

"Anyone want a drink?" Eric waved the bottle in their direction feebly, slightly drawing his speech out to simulate drunkenness.

"Hey, dumbfuck, this is our territory! Get lost!" two of the punks had decided that Eric needed to be removed by force, and one even drew a mere four inches of knife to make the 'threat' 'real' for the former mercenary swordsman.

"I'm gonna shove that beer bottle up your ass, you drunk fucktard," the knife-wielding punk declared brashly. "I said get los—" As the punk grabbed Eric's left shoulder and tried hauling him away from the dumpster, Eric's blade moved into action. The Gladius came up and into the throat of the knife-armed punk just above his Adam's Apple; the thrust of the blade transited the brainstem and exited out the back of his head just above the topmost vertebrae and below the base of the skull. Due to his inertia the body collapsed down and to Eric's left, not leaving much of an option to reclaim his sword and continue the battle with it; Eric went for his old nine-inch belt knife as a secondary, since his broadswords and katanas were in an abandoned apartment building six blocks north of his current position.

The eyes on the second punk told the tale fast enough, though it was short-lived as Eric needed only take one step and a fast thrust into his gut just below the sternum to do the job. The blade went in without significant resistance and cleaved the bottom of his heart from the rest of it. With such trauma inflicted on his critical organ, the foe simply stumbled backwards as Eric retained possession of his knife, leaving only three thugs remaining of five.

"HOLY SHIT!" their 'leader' shouted when he realized that the 'drunk fuck' had just killed two of his subordinates in three seconds. He drew his own blade, but the consternation in his face told Eric that this was not a professional bladesman, and thus only a transitory threat along with his 'comrades', both of which had drawn their own knives for this task.

"You're MINE!" the otherwise silent large guy of the unit shouted, thinking having a shot at Eric's left side was an easy victory.

-x-

"What the—" Vladimir groused as he saw the opening blows of the battle. The flash of the sword was fast, far faster than he was normally used to seeing any blade move, and the precision of the strike would easily have done a Spetsnasz instructor proud. Even before the first body had hit the ground, the 'bum' had drawn his secondary blade and stabbed the chest of the second assailant, a lethal chest wound to his trained eye. The expressions on the remainder of the punk cadre was priceless, in his trained opinion.

_Is he—what the hell is he_? Tabitha asked telepathically of the two kids.

"We think he's the 'demon' the Japanese is after," Kari replied audibly.

"What?" Vladimir asked as the large guy of their group assailed the bum. The bum's knife went up the inside of the punk's left arm, then across his eyes, and finally down on an inward angle through the guy's right brachial plexus. When his body hit the ground he started coughing up blood and wheezing with a distinct sound of liquid in his throat. None of the four observers were of the opinion that he would live more than a minute at the most.

The punk that had been hesitant about 'doing' the teen had backed off against the left wall, now clearly petrified by the robed murderer that had shown up from veritably nowhere. The 'leader' was infuriated more than frightened, and his attempt to challenge the 'bum' was to draw a second knife and begin some form of crazy dual-wielding knife antics in an attempt to scare his erstwhile foe. "Now what you gonna do, tough guy?" he asked with a clear hint of believed superiority.

"Win," the 'bum' said before he delivered an extremely swift kick to the punk's nuts. The sound of the air evacuating the attempted rapist's lungs was accompanied by an attempted screech of pain, but the only thing he succeeded in doing was to collapse to his knees and double over. True to his word, the clearly-not-a-bum drove his knife down into the upper part of his foe's spine, which caused the punk to finish collapsing face-first into the grungy alley and die with his arse sticking up into the air.

"Dude, so not fair," Daniel groused after the sight of the nuts-kick and the impaling of the fourth.

"One more," Tabitha said as she noticed the fifth punk moving.

"He's coming this way!" Kari half-shouted as the punk bolted, running past three of his dead comrades and toward their position.

"I got him," Vladimir drew his pistol and attached the silencer he normally kept. Before he could raise the pistol to sight and shoot, the punk collapsed and skidded face-first for three yards, with one of his leader's knives prominently sticking from his lower back.

"Ah—ah—a—help—help me—" he moaned, waving his left arm in the direction of Kari. Vladimir simply walked around the corner, his pistol down at his side and his eyes on the robed figure not ten yards down the alley. Still he had not seen the blade-wielder's face, as it was still under the hood of the robe; Vladimir didn't believe in ghosts, God or Satan, but he considered that this might actually be some form of demon in front of him.

"Vladimir?" Daniel asked before the Spetsnasz soldier stopped at the wounded punk.

"Help—please help—" Vladimir took aim and fired a single shot into the top of the punk's head, aiming through it and to his brainstem to make his demise quick and painless.

-x-

The fifth of the punks had slid to a stop just shy of the alley intersection, though when he landed Eric was immediately apprised of the presence of four onlookers. More curious was the one man in their ranks, who simply strolled around the corner and stopped nearby the downed foe's head, though still staring at himself. The casual way in which the man took aim at the punk's head and fired a single shot – this one silent except for a metallic ratcheting sound from the firearm itself – was clear demonstration that Eric was now looking at someone who was a professional or a psycho. The presence of two young teenagers and an older lady gave credence to said man being a professional; psychos usually did not keep company of any nature, at least in Eric's limited experience on the subject.

Despite the new threat, Eric did not lose awareness of his initial objective. "Begone, young lady. I do not believe you want to be around for what is to come," Eric said.

"Right," she said in a clear daze; Eric had little trouble understanding that nearly being raped, only to have her assailants massacred in front of her, would be unsettling to most people in Existence. Still and all she was gone within seconds, leaving only Eric and the four newcomers.

The Mage picked his way past the big guy and the tall guy, to where the first assailant still retained his sword in death. A foot on the face and a quick jerk of the blade loosed it from his skull; cleaning the blade was a simple task with the bandana of the deceased, though as he did so the three other persons at the corner had entered the alleyway and all were armed with pistols. _This isn't going to end well_, Eric thought wryly. He figured he had a slim chance against one with a pistol, and no chance against four that were so armed (without using his wizardry, a clear violation of his stealth).

Cleaning the sword took some moments, and the four showed a bit of consternation at seeing him clean a bloodied blade almost nonchalantly. A quick visual inspection against some reflected light was ample to show he did a proper job of removing the blood, after which he sheathed it with a short flair of hand movement. With their ranks apparently unwilling to do anything, Eric figured it a good time to leave the area. "Good day, good sir, milady," Eric said in acknowledgment before he turned away from them.

It was only a pace before one of them called out; his guess was the speaker was the young lady, not the elder one. "Wait!"

Eric stopped and came to standing. "What is it, young one?" Eric replied without turning to face them.

"You...called the lightning and fire on them, didn't you?" the young lady asked as she approached him, her steps audible in the echoing alleyway.

Eric knew such a guess was possible, and had prepared himself for such a happenstance. A single bark of laugh was his immediate answer. "What that such feats were possible, child, I would use them readily." Eric dismissed her (decidedly accurate) guess with what he hoped was convincing nonchalance. In the short silence thereafter, he could tell she approached almost to within touching range of his back, but was still at least at arm's length away from him. "Good day," he said before he started to take a pace.

Her response stopped Eric cold with not even a half step taken: "_**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of—**_" she began chanting, which immediately ran Eric's blood cold but did not numb his wits.

"—Stop—" Eric demanded of her, but not very loudly.

"_**F**__**orever with an—**_" Kari continued, having missed his first request. Eric's blood chilled to the point that he nearly panicked, knowing he had no defense against a spell attack right now.

"STOP!" Eric shouted as he spun to face her and by extension the other three. The elder two took aim with their handguns, but Eric hardly even noticed their actions as he focused on her.

"What?" she asked. "You just said that it can't be done, didn't you?" she asked plaintively.

Eric knew, given the logic trap she just built and Eric inadvertently triggered, he had been clearly tagged. The fact that she knew the exact wording of the spell in question only cemented her position; how she had heard his chanting was beyond him, as the crowd should have still been suffering hearing damage from the weapons fire. "Gods damn it, child, you just came within three words of killing both of us, and you knew it," Eric groused; the reaction on her face went from shock to elation in a matter of moments. "Do not meddle with techniques you are not trained to use, or you may inadvertently kill yourself."

"What? So it CAN be done!" the child declared with clear relish and triumph to voice. "Caught ya! Now what, mister wizard man?"

Eric deflated with a massive groan before first the young lady's twin brother approached, then the two elder persons approached. With these four knowing clearly what happened, and no way to kill all four reliably without likely injuring himself, Eric knew he had lost his gambit on stealth. "Trapped by circumstance, I daresay. Name your price for silence, and I shall consider it even."

"How about starting by not killing us?" the young man asked.

Eric chuckled with mirth. "You receive that benefit by your proximity; I have no spell that would strike you down without myself being consumed," Eric said, though was being mildly untruthful about it. He had more than a few spells that could kill them without harming himself, but he would have to take time to use them (Stone Shard) or would only be able to kill them individually (Flaming Hands, Shocking Grasp).

"How about teaching us how to do that?" the young lady asked. The look of dread on the face of the elder lady was plenty of answer to Eric as to her thoughts on such an effort.

Eric grimaced; whether or not any of them saw it with his hood still concealing his face was unknown. "That might be a problem," Eric answered. "Or, more appropriately, more than one problem."

"What? You have to have special blood or something?" the elder lady asked.

"No, nothing of the sort. It is not capability, it is a question of purpose," Eric answered somewhat archly. "I can train any intelligent person to use these skills. My skills exist not to slay, but to protect lives. I do not teach people outside of a very narrow list of purposes; killing the Imperial Japanese is not on that list."

"What? Then why are you even attacking them?" the man asked sharply.

"They are killing the common people with reckless abandon, people that might have one or more special sets of potential that I have need for. I do not slay their ranks out of purpose to slay them, but in preparation for further goals," Eric said directly.

It was the elder lady that spoke next: "Further goals, is it? You sound like a man with a plan. I can get along with that, given we have a commonality of methods if not purpose," she said. "Are you willing to consider an alliance?" she asked.

"Possibly," Eric replied, sensing something of an oncoming trap or pitfall in her phrasing. "State your premise; I might be able to arrange something."

"Let's walk," the elder lady said. Eric guessed her not much older than he was, if at all, though he had learned quickly that age was a deceptive measure in these lands. What he would have guessed as being a late teen or young adult was but a mid-age teen or sometimes younger, and an old lady in these lands was almost assuredly twice older than an 'old lady' from his homeland.

-x-

_What the Hell are you two doing? This guy could turn us into human torches in an instant!_ Daniel Porom asked his sister and his boss by way of his telepathy.

_He's on the level, more so than some of the other people we've had in the unit_, Kari replied to her brother's scathing inquiry.

_And I agree with her_, Tabitha replied in the same fashion the question was asked. _Worst case, we part ways. Best case, he assists us in annihilating the Nazis while we help him pick up his objectives_.

_I hope to God you're right, or this will end very quickly and very badly for us_, Daniel closed his protest.

"Let's walk," Tabitha indicated the wizard should follow "Kari, Daniel, Can you—" she gestured toward then deceased.

"We shall," Daniel answered. "Nobody is coming."

Vladimir trailed behind the robed wizard, and found himself surprised that the wizard did not fit any of the typical stereotypes of their ranks. He was not old, did not have a beard, had no cat or owl, and certainly didn't dress like what one sees in typical fantasy artwork. If anything, his manner of dress would be closer to a street bum (excepting the sword) and his age was far closer to 'teen' than it was 'elderly'. The contrast of such a thought almost made him an anti-wizard in Vladimir's opinion, and the sword-work was definitely not something that a prototypical wizard was ever said to be good at.

"You're not a normal wizard," the Russian said.

"Correct," the Mage said. "The proper term for my duties, 'Commissioned Spellcraft Operator and Instructor' would be closest in your language. My skills are not limited to the spellbook, as you may have noticed."

"Duly noted," Tabitha replied evenly. "Where did you learn to use a sword and knives with such skill?"

"A long story, of a long history," The Wizard answered pensively. "If you will excuse me for side-stepping such a question for now?"

"For now," Tabitha replied. "To be a little more direct, you and I have common methods, if not common end-game scenarios. If you are willing to tell of your end game, I will speak of mine."

The wizard sighed; Vladimir was unsure why he would show hesitation, but the few seconds of pause was definitely not for levity. "I was commissioned by the Norns to spread the art of wizardry as far as possible, but also to develop and spread the most rare of those disciplines when I can find the necessary candidates. To properly begin the instruction and spread of those skills, neither I or the potential candidates may be at threat of Nazi or IJA reprisal, thus my actions against their ranks."

"That...is bizarre," Tabitha replied. "What is the training about?"

"I make it a point: when divine beings give me orders, I do not question them," Eric hedged. He knew the reasoning, but he would discuss such reasons with those drawn into his cadre at a later time, not for now.

"Fair enough," Tabitha allowed. She could sense he was not lying on those grounds, but she could also not sense what he was concealing in those terms.

"Your goal...from context, I can assume it is the elimination of the Imperial Japanese?" the Wizard asked.

"And the Nazis," Vladimir said from behind the Wizard.

"My goal does not require that much blood, but I do see your point about common methods and somewhat-linked endgame. You seek an alliance?"

"Something to that effect," Tabitha replied. "I was going to ask you if you want a position in my resistance cell, but I am wondering if you would be able to work as part of a team," she hedged.

The Wizard snorted audibly. "Prior to being trained as a wizard, I was a mercenary, and prior to that I was a line Bladesman – a form of infantry from old times. I am not unaccustomed to working with others, or commanding personnel."

"Vladimir?" Tabitha asked.

"We have seen his handiwork in action before, and even just tonight," the Russian said. "A silent killer who can touch anything he wants, leaving no fingerprints, leaving no physical evidence, this is not someone to pass up. I may even try my hand at it."

"What's the entrance fee into these dark recesses?" Tabitha asked.

Eric snorted again. "A willingness to learn and spend years learning, no reservations about the skills you will learn – you will be learning dark magicks that most religions have strong objection to;" Eric threw that one out there for prior warning, given the manipulation of the dead was definitely frowned on by the Christian religion. "And the knowledge that the Fates may call upon you to conduct action elsewhere. If you can tolerate these three tenets, I can train you. Otherwise, consider me a special form of battlefield support for the time being."

"I can live with that," The resistance cell leader answered. "Tabitha Fersner. Vladimir Pevlekov is behind you. You?"

"Eric Atrebas," the Wizard answered. "The young ones?"

"Kari and Daniel Porom, twins," Tabitha answered. "May we count on your assistance, then?"

"For the foreseeable future, you may."

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence)

Talpa looked out and down from the balcony at the mostly abandoned fortress town he now resided in. "Hundreds of years of war leads to this," he groused. "A land that lacks sufficient population to defend itself now, forcing its priests to settle the succession by calling out to the Heavens for someone who can correct the problems."

The priests, and in particular High Priest Badamon, looked among themselves nervously. They knew he had shown the sign of the one they sought, but so far the logic of his questions were pointing at results they liked not one whit. They grumbled, but they all knew the result was in the name of the necessary rituals. Talpa was the one called into the flames by way of Verthandi transporting him out of reach of the Greeks, a tale that had shaken the High Priest and his disciples to their core. That beings of such unimaginable power existed was enough to turn stomachs for everyone.

"I now understand why my brother's soul was so hardened. Years of war is far from a pretty outcome to anyone, and this land shows that fact adroitly. A solution needs to be implemented, but it will be a solution you would not like."

"You intend to surrender," Badamon griped in a neutral tone (or as close to a neutral tone as he could get).

"No, an Atrebas never surrenders," Talpa replied with an even voice. "We do not surrender, not now, never to come. However, we do not have to drag this out perpetually to achieve a variation of victory. The battle can be stopped, now, and we can outdo them in the long run."

"If you will not surrender, how will you end the battle, sir?" a subordinate priest asked.

"The homeland of my father, Durgan, used a special form of agreement when the necessities of battle did not justify the risks. These treaties are called 'Cease Combat Treatise', which is an agreement between parties involved that the battle will end without either side capitulating. Lines will be stabilized as they are now, no territory will change hands and no side will surrender to another. It is used to end a battle in such a fashion that no more battle will be sparked, at least until a time and place of my choosing."

Badamon nodded slowly. "So you end the battle now, giving us time to rebuild and prepare, then we resume at a later date? It would appear I misread your intentions, highness," he admitted.

"Depending on how things play out in the next two or three generations, we may not be required to do battle again. There are other ways to subsume a nation, if one is apt enough to think that far forward."

"Then shall I prepare documents?" Badamon requested; Talpa nodded affirm. "Apprentices, scribe four copies of this treatise as Lord Talpa has commanded. Bring them here once you have generated them from the flames."

Four of the apprentice Priests disappeared, undoubtedly headed to other areas of the castle to prepare the documents. Talpa had found himself in awe of the pattern his new society had folded into; Eric had trained him to be an independent warrior and problem solver, blending both magic and technologic skills, but the Dynasty he now ruled relied on magic for nearly everything. The population was split between common laborers (60 percent) and skilled laborers (40 percent), with a minority of Priests that produced the materials the former two classifications used in their day-to-day affairs. The amount of wood consumed by magic fires was significant, but the results were undeniable: anything requiring materials other than dirt, water, wood, or air was easily produced and provided by their spellcraft, and in significant quantity.

The apprentices returned after ten minutes with four scrolls, each a copy of a completely neutral treaty to end the war and stabilize the borders. Talpa read over each copy and was rightly impressed by their phrasing and completely cold, unbiased logic. "This is the necessary path to silence, Badamon. From the silence, from the defense, we shall build a better offense. From the better offense, we shall build the proper path for the Dynasty and for the whole of Existence."

"The Days of Ragnarok, you intend on challenging this?" Badamon knew that much from Talpa's story, as it was foretold in their own mythology that all life would end in Darkness.

"It is so," Talpa said. "Send for the representatives of the other nations. Best we begin the necessary steps to achieve further ends."

High Priest Badamon signaled to the guards at the door to relay the order; the two soldiers were out the door without further issue. "I will warn you, sir, if the East Lands get a chance they will try to sour your lineage by requesting an arranged marriage as confirmation of your intentions. They will put pretentious phrase to their request, but it will be simply be a transparent ploy to pollute the blood of the new leader."

"Let them," Talpa ordered, unconcerned with such machinations. "My intention is to maintain my rule for generations to come, by use of certain forms of spellcraft that can increase or decrease the age of targeted objects. You have had succession problems for just exactly the reason you gave, for at least 400 years. I will end that reason; I will give the Dynasty the greatness it aspires to and more, and I shall assist my brother and the Norse Gods in striking down Loki's throngs. What say you?"

Badamon chuckled in his native high tone of voice. "It would appear that the flames spoke correctly. You can balance the highest of lofty goals with the most base of desires, and do it all in ways that we could never have foreseen. I dread the day we encounter your relatives, and what they have forged for themselves! Though, until that day, it shall be an interesting journey in interesting times..."

The door at the far end of the Great Hall opened, with four guards escorting three persons – two men and a lady. "And what makes you believe I would do battle with my relatives? That is wasted effort, wasted lives, provided they do not seek the battle themselves."

"This is so, yet I find in your spirit a kindred desire to do battle. I can only assume that your relatives would have the same predisposition, especially if raised under the same parentage and principle."

"More so," Talpa admitted readily. "That said, in light of the predicament to which we have been commissioned and then separated, it is unlikely they will seek battle without profit to the long-term goal of challenging these nightmares."

"Is this the new 'Lord' of the Dynasty, Badamon?" one of the three approaching representatives asked. "Your magic draws ever more and more outlandish persons to command these lands. This is troubling."

"My lord, I present Lady Belquonte, Northern Republics of Vidi," Talpa nodded to her, as she was not the one with the snarky comment. "Lord Vinotas, Veil of Truths for the Roughlands Empire," and Talpa recognized Vinotas as the one who had dropped the oblique insult. "Master Gilnam, ambassador to the Eastern Rising Empire." High Priest Badamon looked to the three ambassadors. "Respected representatives, this is Lord Talpa."

"Another one in less than a decade," Lady Belquonte sighed. "Will you start as the last one did, gloating over a new 'plan' for conquest?"

"I could, but to do so would serve no purpose, no profit for your nations or mine," Talpa said adroitly. "In ten days, I have studied 400 years of history of this Empire, and all it looks like is one ration of bloodshed after another, just as readily trading gained lands for lost lands against your three nations. This is not the way to maintain an Empire, nor make one."

"Has your ritual fouled up?" Lord Vinotas asked the high priest directly. "This is not characteristic of those you have imported before."

"I believe that is the point," Badamon said directly. "Our ritual does not lie, nor did the rather unique result that came with it."

"You were saying something about maintaining an Empire," Master Gilnam prompted.

"There is an old principle from my homeland, a way to end a war without the destruction of completing the campaign, or the capitulation of the parties that serves no purpose. Shall I go on?" Talpa asked, almost assured that his proposal would cause a firestorm.

There was no immediate response from the three. "Go on," Lady Belquonte requested after a brief and somewhat creepy silence.

"The direct term is 'Cease Combat Treaty'. The principle is simple: all parties immediately stop combat campaigns and take defensive stance. National borders are fixed as per territory held at the time of signing. Nobody declares surrender or defeat, leaving no political instability in the involved nations." Badamon presented each of the representatives with a copy of the treaty.

"How...interesting," Lord Vinotas said in a sly tone. "So, it is basically saying the war no longer exists? No other changes?"

"The only changes codified in the treaty are the only changes applicable. You may have arrangements between your nations, but those arrangements have nothing to do with the cease combat treaty."

"And we are supposed to believe you would not simply rebuild and resume the war at a later time?" Lady Belquonte asked.

"And go about causing the same mess at a later date?" Talpa asked succinctly. "I hope I do not look that naïve, milady Belquonte. It is unstated but readily understood that your nations would rebuild and expand just as quickly as mine; the stalemate would be maintained indefinitely under such terms."

Lord Vinotas chuckled grimly. "Finally, a sensible Dynasty Lord who does not think his power infinite! A refreshing change of pace, this war has dragged on for far too long."

"I am inclined to agree," Lady Belquonte replied warily. "It is not the most definitive or elegant solution, but it is a solution to the continuing state of affairs."

"Master Gilnam?" Vinotas asked of the third representative, who was simply staring into the document.

"What bonafide would you provide to verify your willingness to adhere to this?" Gilnam asked.

"What would your nation accept as proof?" Talpa asked after a moment's thought.

Master Gilnam was silent for a few moments of thought. "The Royal Princess, Lady Kayura, is presently at the age of consideration at which we would be looking for a suitable husband." Talpa spared a quick glance for Badamon, whose narrowed eyes declared he knew this would happen. "I will warn you, she is a very, erm, active person. You will need to find a way to keep her out of trouble."

"Not all that dissimilar from my younger sisters, I daresay," Talpa mused. "To your request, I reply that if she is willing, I will accept the arrangement," the Lord-Candidate of the Dynasty admitted.

Vinotas blanched. "IF she is willing? You place her preference as a condition?"

"I would not take her if she was unwilling," Talpa replied. "Such a course would only cause trouble in the long run, not the least of which being further soured relations between governments." His unstated but easily assumed position was he didn't want to be wed to someone who hated his guts, regardless of the 'niceties' of arranged marriage at this level.

"Ah," Gilnam replied. "I will accept this treaty as is written, and will offer your hand to the Lady Kayura within a fortnight."

"I will accept this treaty as well," Lady Belquonte confirmed.

Lord Vinotas chuckled grimly. "One does not dwell long on ending a war, I daresay. I shall sign."

"We are in agreement," Talpa replied, then signed the Dynasty copy. The copies rotated around the circle of persons clockwise, for each to sign again. The Dynasty treaty went first to Master Gilnam, then to Vinotas, then lastly to Belquonte before it returned to his hand.

"Atrebas, is it? An interesting surname. Who else holds such a distinction?"

"Nine others use my blood-name. It is unlikely you will ever encounter them, as the Gods of our homeland scattered us to multiple unique locations...and purposes." There were gapes among the group, that this line of succession would likely not be called into question due to his extended family. "Were you to encounter they, I suggest respect and tact. I am probably the weakest among the family in magic arts, as it would take me about half a day to completely eradicate a city-state when enraged. The others could do it in far less, the best thereof could do so in a single stroke." Talpa maintained nor fronted no illusion on such matters; he could use combat spellcraft, but his strength laid in using magic enhancements and effect spells to augment his considerable sword and pike skills.

"Dear Lord, we should tread carefully in their presence," Lady Belquonte said.

Lord Vinotas was a little more direct in showing his true feelings. "If it pleases the Lord of the Dynasty, we will retire and pass word to our home nations to end the war as per our treaty."

"I will detain you no further," Talpa nodded to them. "Guards, see them to their residences, and ensure them safe travel to their homelands."

"Aye, Lord Talpa," the senior guard of the escort detail replied

Badamon and Talpa were the only beings left in the grand hall of the Dynasty Palace-Fortress. "You have held your tongue for long enough, Badamon."

"I knew they would accept on the belief that you will take the hand of one of theirs, but this may be trouble," Badamon said. "If anything, Master Gilnam underplayed the tribulations you are in line for. Lady Kayura is widely known as a wild one."

"A challenge is not the worst thing to face," Talpa replied smoothly; he was expecting a challenge, as the Atrebas traditionally never sought arranged marriages. "This is the critical point: a change in leadership, a change in manifest, and a change in circumstance. Here, now, the Dynasty can change its course, and thereby prevent being annihilated by its neighbors."

"And then we move of our own accord, I take it?" Badamon asked in the silence after Talpa's proclamation.

"Oh no, we will move in concert with the other nations, once we have subsumed their lands and pacified their arrogant leadership. This will be a matter of scores of years, Badamon, that our plans will follow nontraditional methods and procedures. I hope you have the stomach for a long-term campaign, even if it is in the shadows."

"I shall be." His cackling laugh was somewhat haunting to Talpa, but not completely untoward to his ears. "What orders do I give the military?"

"All forces will hold positions and set up defensive fortifications at present boundaries. Any warlord that balks at these orders is to be dismissed, or if they are insubordinate on the matter I want their heads. The treaties are the linchpin in this operation; if we invalidate them, we will have problems executing further steps."

"Understood, sire," Badamon gave orders to several of his subordinate priests to relay those commands to the various campaigning warlords.

Talpa turned back to the balcony, and the partially-empty fortress town of his new residence. "We can do it all, if only we are intelligent about it."

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

It is a good thing that this chapter spent almost a week in beta, for I made a few mistakes in it that would have made it a lot darker and more dystopic than even I initially set it up for. There comes a point at which the sides fighting for control are both monsters, with only abstract principles being the difference between sides, nothing concrete or moral. I didn't think it was possible to out-Nazi the Nazis, but I think I came close in my original events in a few places.

The main point this rotates around is operational security. In all fairness to my beta, who called me on the points of OpSec, yes, I did kinda push the bounds. For the readers, you should be able to identify the points in question, but as to how I initially intended to resolve them, well, I'll leave that up to your imagination. Rest assured it was not pretty by any measure of the word, and probably would have turned a stomach or two.

That being said, I think it needs to be made clear that stealth and operational security are areas with no grey territory: either you are stealthy, or you're a target. Recent warfare history is rife with people trying to muddle around in the middle territory and getting flattened for their trepidation. Two big, loud ones come to mind: 1991 Gulf, a team of Rangers were dropped into Iraq to observe movements on a highway, were discovered by locals, and the Iraqi Military sent in several battalions of troops to get them. The only thing that kept the Rangers alive was timely air support; without that lifeline, that would have been a dead unit. The other one is the story of the Lone Survivor, the SEAL unit Marcus Luttrell was in, also had a run-in with locals and in the ensuing battle his unit was wiped out to the last man – of an entire team, he was the only survivor. Ergo, ignoring civilians who know you are there is bad for your unit's health, especially when said civilians have been conditioned to hate you or believe that (insert nation here) is the enemy.

Granted, the only way for them to have maintained stealth was to have eliminated the locals – civilians – to preserve OpSec, and in both cases someone in the team had a clear chance to do so, but faltered. I cannot and will not fault the teams involved for not shooting the civvies, but an overarching lesson bears mentioning: dead men tell no tales. There comes a point at which you have to decide what the value of the mission is, compared to the life of one guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, and less restrained parties will pull that trigger or use that knife. So far I've manage to avoid that eventuality in this story, but bear in mind it will eventually come down to a decision point where someone has to pull the trigger or the ops team gets killed. Don't expect it to look pretty when it does happen.

As to the incidents in the story above, well, expect at least one of those incidents will come back to haunt the merciful party in the extreme. Dodging one problem via the dice may make further checks worse – and this one has already checked real bad. Not unlike real life: ignoring a real problem (now) will come back to bite your arse real hard (later).

That being said, onto the meat of the story. Eric seems to have no luck with holding a permanent residence of late, but that may have changed here at the end of the chapter. Conversely, his brother Talpa seems to have had plenty of luck finding permanent residence, and even a good start to spreading influence. Of course, expect neither of these stories to be easy for the persons involved. There are far too many thing that can still go wrong for these persons to call it a resolved problem.

The rebel attack on the ammunition supply truck was a bit of an interesting problem for me – and, initially I had written it out incorrectly. I had always intended it as a rebel attack, but in a bad case of sleep deprivation dumbassness I somehow managed to write it out as an attack by Eric. Oops. Thankfully, as was written it was easy to correct. This also leads to the follow-on section, where the SS run an assault on the apartment building that housed the assailants.

And lastly for Eric, the final encounters. The IJA Investigators are getting real frisky now that they have an idea what is causing it (even if a wrong idea), and this is not the end of this matter even by a long shot. Eric may have put a temporary quash to random street pickups and using executions as bait, but it is not the end of the matter, not by a long shot. There will be other ways for them to strike at the 'demon', and they will use them. Expect it will get bloodier before the days are up, or before something else major happens.

The rebel connection is now made; two such beings were fated to cross, that much was engineering on Verthandi's part. Where the rebellion goes from here, how it advances, what things Eric will teach and what he shall learn, these are questions I am yet to determine outcome. There is a large cast of rebels here, and a world full of very pissed off persons to show and show in action. And this brings the question: how will the future unfold under the present variables? I leave that to your imagination for now.

That is my notes for the day.

NEXT UP: Eric acclimates to life in a rebel base, and the strange things he's dropped into. The rebels, however, have a lot to acclimate to in terms of dealing with someone from ancient times and different rules of living...

* * *

Review Replies: Three replies for the last chapter, much thanks for the continuing ideas and critique!

**Takeshi Yamato**: Actually, the SS Paranormal Division is something from Return To Castle Wolfenstein. It's some pretty freaky shit, and expect Those Wacky Nazis to try going that far even against the nightmare they'll soon see with their own eyes...

On the armor they are preparing, it's properly termed Armored Infantry – the Marines in the JW are a subset of the Armored Infantry that are specially trained for naval operations. The distinction is kinda like the Army versus the Marines – call one the other, expect to get punched in the head :)

This chapter probably lacks 'fun' in comparison to the last, and that wasn't particularly by design, but things will get worse before they get better.

**Necroblade**: Once again, thank you for the beta help. I believe I needed it in this case, I think I went way too far, way too fast.

You're right about the well-intentioned extremist part of your review, when you start killing all that do evil, you will likely end up in that camp just the same. Eric's going to flirt with that problem more than once in coming chapters and sets, but that is part of the learning process just as much as anything else.

You're right, every one of the family will get some time in the spotlight, and things will get a bit bizarre for the other relatives. And trust me on this, it will get REAL bizarre for the rest of the family. Eric just has it rough.

**Etienne Of The West Wind**: Well, this chapter should answer your first active question, no?

He walked away because of the necessities of operational security. Herein, the Rebels proved they had firsthand knowledge of his actions, which broke his ability to maintain OpSec and stealth. Fortunately, they were crazy enough to think that having a wizard around would be interesting/helpful.

Vala has an interesting one, Talpa even more so, but wait for the rest of the family to get their digs in – it will get stranger by an order of magnitude.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! And to those who read but do not review, thank you nonetheless for trying and sticking to it.

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: No gripes from the last chapter. Once again, much thanks to Necroblade for correcting my FUBARs, and trust me, I do routinely Fsck it up in the big ways.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): **Mils** is the reference for aiming reticules. A mil is the shortened term for Milliradian, which on angular calculation for targeting systems 1 mil difference = 1/4 inch at 100 yards distance, or roughly 8mm distance at 100 meters. When you add up mils corrections over both amount and distance, a few mils can sometimes mean the difference between a hit and a miss, or a lethal hit and a nonlethal hit.

(2): **Flashbang** **N**oise **F**lash **D**evice. Commonly called "stun grenades", they are designed to distract, blind, and disorient unprotected persons in the area to render them easy to capture (in police terms) or neutralize (in military terms).

(3): **M**ilitary **O**perations on **U**rban **T**errain. A training course designed to teach soldiers the extremely difficult and methodical tactics and techniques used in urban warfare scenarios.

* * *

Included Works:

REAL LIFE

—Spetsnasz: The tough-as-hell Russian Special Forces are in it on this one, serving the purpose of the Green Berets did serve for America in wars past. Rest assured, they will get some serious showing in chapters to come. With the IJA and Nazis planning on screwing the Soviets, the Soviets intend to screw back – and the Rebels will be involved in that.

ANIME

—Dragon Ball Series (UNINTENTIONAL): I wrote out the Solar Flare spell on a Monday. Wednesday afternoon, I remembered that Krillin had the same skill. Not an intentional copy, since Dragonball is not that high on my list of favorite anime, but the similarity is interesting in hindsight...

ORIGINAL WORKS

—The song shown about a third into this chapter is an original work of mine, and a definite piece of improv as well as a lot more subtle stab at the ruling parties. If anyone wants to put it to use in another fic or in a band, have at it. Just PM me with where it is used so I can read through or listen.

* * *

Spell Registry:

COMBAT SPELLCRAFT branch

Gray Spellcraft (Support Spellcraft)

—Solar Flare: MinDR of 8.000 to use, no material components required, no casting restrictions. This spell creates a small orb of light above an outstretched hand or finger, then 'detonates' the ball with a massive flash. The spell will not affect any person with a higher Distortion Rating than the initial caster's modified rating, and will not affect the caster by default. The radius of the flash caused is one yard per DR of the caster, with the flash being blinding to those who are within four times the radius distance and blinding to eight times the distance if someone has LOS to the flash ball. The spell's effect is clearly visible at any distance, provided LOS exists to the flash orb, though at extensive distances the speed of life will delay seeing the attack.


	10. New Confidence

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 10: New Confidence)

(16 March 2041, 2130 Hours)  
(Nazi Headquarters South America theater, Manaus, Brazil)

"That went well," 'Mad Max' Rudelt grumped.

"Oh yes," _Oberstgruppenführer_ Heinrich Von Stauffenberg bemoaned. "An outstanding use of personnel. Send an investigator out to find this 'demon', he challenges the whole city by killing innocents, and gets himself cooked right where he stands. Oh, by the way, killing civilians indiscriminately does not help mollify a population."

The attack in question was less than 3 hours old, though reports had not taken long to filter in from the witnesses. The investigation team was only now starting on the scene, but more disturbing was the necessity for a second investigation parallel to the first – a drunk transient had happened across a series of dead bodies in a parallel alleyway to the first scene. Somebody had been busy in the evening hours, and the three involved Nazi commanders were beginning to wonder if there really wasn't something serious going on in Sao Paulo.

"Hey, not my plan, _herr __Oberstgruppenführer_. In a proper world, this manner of attempting to provoke a demon would not have happened, because the investigator would have been smart enough to not do it."

"Can't be helped," Maximillian Rudelt groused in response to the junior SS Paranormal Division Investigator. "At least it wasn't one of yours. So, where does this leave us in the search for this maggot?"

"Well, for damn sure we're not going to bait the fucker into coming out again," Von Stauffenberg suggested. The subordinate officers took his suggestion as holy writ, both for survival and chain-of-command reasons. "We need to review every incident and look for similarities, people, objects, contraband, whatever it may be."

"You think he may be disguising himself as an object, sir?" The SS Paranormal Investigator asked.

"Either that, or he's the mysterious invisible fucker I think is breathing down my neck," the _Oberstgruppenführer_ said sardonically.

"I thought that was the job of the brass?" Max asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Could be both at this point in my life," Heinrich groused.

"On the other hand, gentlemen," _Untersturmführer_ Kari Teane prompted, drawing both the senior officers out of the morose logic trap they were building for themselves. "We know this threat can be provoked, and does have at least some sense of propriety. Whether that propriety is directed at civilians or directed at the challenging IJA investigator, we do not know."

"Hard theory to test," _Hauptsturmführer_ 'Mad Max' Rudelt mused. "Challenging the demon directly is likely to get us nowhere – if he is smart, and we have no reason to believe he is not – all he has to do is ignore us to make the SS look like jackasses. Challenging him indirectly – threatening civilians, similar – is not going to help us win the hearts and minds of our conquest."

"How can we smoke him out?" Heinrich asked both the junior officers in the room. "There must be something we can do to get the attention of this scrapper."

"Actually, at this point I suggest we do _not_ get the attention of this demon, sir," the SS Paranormal Investigator suggested. "If we get his attention, he gets violent. If we ignore him, he is randomly violent off and on – more off than on, as it happens." Though always fatal and usually extremely destructive, even 'Mad Max' Rudelt had to admit her statement was very logical. The total amount of attacks thus far could be counted on two hands, a numeric insignificance when compared to the ongoing guerrilla wars throughout the Americas. In all reality, only the sheer spectacularity of the kills was what had drawn so much attention to them.

"Go on," Von Stauffenburg said.

"I suggest we take a passive course. We put out press statements to the effect that we know something is happening, though it is a marginal problem and downplay it at every turn. I will pull some strings with the Paranormal Division brass, see if we can increase the amount of field personnel on site. The more manpower I can get searching for it, the better. We start tearing the city apart, but we do so slowly and calmly, just make it look like we have increased the amount of personnel in town, not necessarily for the purpose of searching."

"How many investigators can you get in place in say, 48 hours?"

"Two days? I could have a battalion of personnel in here in two days if I push hot buttons."

"How hard would it be to push that button?" Von Stauffenburg asked with a savage tone to voice.

Kari blinked once, hard, then smiled. She saw the writing on this wall clearly. "Not hard at all, especially given the amount and types of events."

"Max, get her a sledgehammer to make sure the button is pushed hard and proper. I want this threat resolved _yesterday_."

"_Jawhol_, sir. I'll get on the radio immediately."

-x-x-x-

(17 March 2041, 0630 Hours)  
(Rebel underground base, Northern Sao Paulo, Brazil)

The tone at the rebel headquarters was nowhere near as savage as the tales in the Nazi headquarters well to the north. All things considered, the continual if sporadic slaying of Nazi and IJA personnel by the mystery being was making everyone in the rebellion happy, and at the same time frightened for the reason why it was happening. Depending on who was asked questions about the incidents, opinions would definitely vary about the mysterious attacks. Of course there was no shortage of rebels that would have given parts of their anatomy to learn how to conduct such attacks, as Eric found out from the twins that night.

Of course, the tone of the rebels went silent just as soon as Eric Atrebas entered the assembly room in the underground base. It was a predictable reaction, part operational security and part inspection of the newcomer. That he was being escorted by the rebel commander made his presence slightly less suspect, but the icy stares from the subordinate rebels were something to be expected – as were a pair of visible weapons in the hands of two of the rebel field operatives.

"Listen up, all of you," Tabitha began the introduction. "By now, you should all know that the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese are searching long and hard for a demon of some kind. A demon that keeps blowing Nazis up at random intervals. Let me be the first tell you that is not a demon they are searching for, but a person. A very well-trained person."

"And this gruff is it?" Eric was not sure who said it, but at a guess he figured it came from a gaggle of ladies that did not appear to be field personnel.

"Correct. The twins caught him in the act of cooking Imperials last night, and then we watched him make a butchery of a street gang with only a knife and a sword."

"Is he hot?" One of the ladies asked. Her uniform declared her some kind of mechanical staff, not field personnel.

"You can see him right there, dork. Doesn't look too bad," Another of the internal staffers noted.

"No, I mean do the Nazis or IJA know of him?" The first lady asked in counter.

"Eric?" Tabitha prompted.

"I have been no more scrutinized by the Nazis than it takes for they to spit on a bum as they walk by," Eric answered calmly. "If they know of me, they have made no moves that declare it."

There was silence in the common room for a few elongated seconds before someone stood up. Eric recognized him as the field operator who favored a large-blade utility weapon for close-in action, a weapon not matched to Eric's preference of Gladius but formidable against anyone with a mere knife or no bladed weapon. "I'm sorry, boss-lady, but this is pushing it, no? I mean, yeah, new face is good, but him doing all that nasty shit? That's a bit much for a joke."

"Carlos..." Tabitha groused. "Okay, we'll settle this one right here and now." The rebel leader turned to Eric. "Do you have any noncombat spells that would be suitable for a demonstration?"

"I can think of a few," Eric noted with remarkable brevity, as if he readily expected this manner of challenge. "Can these illuminators be deactivated?" he waved a finger at the flourescent light panels above him.

"Strange name for lights;" Tabitha frowned at the unusual phrasing. "Joey, kill 'em."

After a second, one of the internal staffers reached the switches and turned them off. "I wonder what this is going to be," someone else said.

"I hope it's something visually awesome," the girl among the twins commented.

"I hope it isn't destructive," Vladimir groused.

"While not my primary demonstration, I think this should serve as a significant telltale." Eric drew the blade of one of his magicked broadswords. Immediately several of the persons in the room gasped, as the green-blue color was significantly foreign to everyone in his presence. "The use of wizardry skills to enchant an object usually creates a visual aura directly related to the spells within the item. Some enchantments have no aura, others have a non-colored aura."

"Isn't that the same color as radioactive glow?" Daniel, the twin brother to the girl that outed him, asked nobody in particular. His voice was somewhat wavering, as if he was asking a question in fear.

"Radioactive material glows blue in real life, the movies show it as green," Vladimir replied with gusto.

"As I said, just a demonstration," Eric replied as he returned the sword to sheath. With his sword concealed again, the room returned to darkness. "A simple show of lights is the answer. _**A **__**thousand **__**points **__**radiate**__**, **__**the **__**hovering **__**of **__**light **__**balls **__**cover **__**this **__**land **__**in **__**Fairy **__**Glow**_," he chanted.

"Should I laugh, or wait longer?" one of the male mechanics asked.

"Laugh at your own hazard, dude," one of the ladies commented dryly.

"It is not the fastest spell to take effect, give it a moment," Eric replied drolly. "And...there," he said as the first light point began radiating from the concrete floor below them.

"Holy shit!" A lady shouted in the silence.

"Dude! This is unreal!" the lady among the twins half-squealed as more points appeared from the concrete.

Within a minute of the first glow appearing, the room was lit brighter than the installed lighting would provide, simply by the light-blue glow of dozens of the small fairy lights. "Are they harmful? Radioactive?"

"They are projected light, nothing more;" to prove it, Eric reached out to one at eye level and closed his hand around it. With no effort, his hand passed through it and the light continued radiating even from inside his hand, though for the brief moment the point was inside his palm it glowed red instead of light blue. "An interesting thing about this spell is that the color of the lights created will vary from person to person, as will size, brightness and numbers. It is also one of the easiest spells to use, as nearly any early-training wizard cadet can use it – and many do to provide light for reading old tomes."

"Holy shit, boss, I think I was wrong," Carlos said deadpan. "Don't let me ever talk smack about him. Ever."

"What? So he's made a couple lights. No big deal, that, we still don't know he did it for real," an elder guy scoffed, even with his hand around one of the light points. "I've said it before, I'll say it again. One man isn't going to be able to do it all."

"To do it all is neither intended nor possible," Eric readily admitted. "I am one man, not a God. Then again, I don't have to do it all to achieve my objective."

"Can anyone do that?" Kari asked after a few moments. "I mean, can anyone learn it?"

"Most, though I say this with the understanding that it will take years of training to learn to conduct combat spellcraft independently." Eric noted the combination of soured and quizzical looks among them. "Any of you could grab my wrist and have access to roughly half my spellcasting ability – if you knew the spells, that is. Getting to the point where you could do that half-power casting on your own would take decades of training."

"Oh," Carlos gaped.

"Where do we sign up?" A mechanic asked. "And what are the requirements?"

"You have to be willing to train for years, possibly decades or longer if you want access to the most powerful spells." Eric would not admit that he was cheating on certain spells, given the use of such power-enhancing rings and relics he had about his person. He also guessed it would not take them long to figure out how he was doing it with only a mere 15 years active training himself. "You must have no reserve for what you learn – some of what I teach is considered 'dark arts' and will cause moral dilemmas in some people." A few grimaced, but none reacted away from him notably. "Third, and this is not a point that can be contested, I was commissioned by the Fates with the clear understanding that the Fates may call upon some of my students for other tasks elsewhere in Existence. I cannot guarantee if or when they might come calling, but it would be best if any that choose to begin the process of study do so with the understanding that you may have to give up your war with the Nazis for other pursuits. That said, the Fates do not call upon people without purpose; if they say you can do better somewhere else, they have clear reason for it. If you accept these points, I will teach any who wish to learn."

The room was silent for nearly a minute, still illuminated by the glow of the spell-generated lights.

"Any who wish to join, please stand up," Tabitha ordered. It took not more than five seconds for the entire group to stand and come to attention. "Everyone?"

"Why not? It isn't any crazier than our other projects," the female lead mechanic suggested.

"I would say you have your first class of trainees, Eric. Including myself."

Nobody in the room missed the flex of his left eyebrow at that comment.

-x-x-x-

(21 March 2041, 2030 Hours)  
(Commercial District, Central Sao Paulo)

Enichi Yamagata, Japanese army officer, found the selection of teas in Sao Paulo to be a bit lacking compared to home. Still, he was not in town for a tea sampling, his was business and the purpose of this meet was business.

"You no doubt saw the aftermath of the investigator." It was not a question, but a direct statement from Chief Inspector Kenijiro Tanaka.

"Not much to see there, it was the same as the prior attacks."

"The same, and it confirms handily what we all have suspected."

"A demon," Enichi said in a hushed tone. "What is worse, it is a vindictive demon. Trying to draw it out only angers it."

"That was a rogue action, Yamagata-san. We all have talked about investigation and tracking techniques; one of the first suggestions was to bait it out, and one of the first quashed was to bait it out. This incident simply proves why."

Though Enichi had found the tone of the Chief Inspector to be humorous, this was neither the topic nor the time for a good laugh at some _baka_'s expense. What he had done was foolhardy to the point of self-destructiveness; there was really no way to justify provoking the demon, all the more so that it killed with pinpoint precision wherever it pleased. He would, of course, be declared a casualty of war, but there was no escaping the fact that he had died of the dumbs and would be recorded in classified records as such.

"Idiot killed himself with his own idiotic operation plan." This time, Enichi could not help but laugh at the direct parallel to his own thinking. "You were thinking the same thing as I, were you not?"

"Quite guilty," _Shōshō_ Yamagata admitted with a rueful chuckle. "You bait an enemy with his illusions, not his strengths. A demon like this is strong in her invisibility, strong in her propriety, and strong in her reactions, all strengths that are hard to counter. On a foe like this, we currently have no idea what her illusions would be, if any."

"By that definition, no manner of baiting would be wise?" The Chief Inspector grimaced in the silence thereafter. "What do you suggest?"

"I don't really know what our options could be at this time." Thinking as an army officer in this case was the difficult part, made all the more difficult by the circumstances of the problem. Simply stated, army officers were not trained to deal with demons, mainly because most intelligent people considered them to be a non-issue borne of fairy tales long past. "This is really one of those dreams you wish you were subject to as a child or a teen, not something an objective army officer would think of - or ever think a legitimate possible enemy."

It was the Inspector's turn to chuckle at the inner admission of the Major General sitting across the table from him. "Only problem with that thought is the attitude of our erstwhile foe - she isn't interested in being kindly or homely to any of us, she is trying to exterminate the Nazis and IJA in Sao Paulo. Doesn't leave much room for personal relationships, now does it?"

"One could dream, Tanaka-san, one can dream."

"Not me, thank you," Kenijiro replied diffidently. "Already married. The last thing I need is a mistress that can kill me from range, I have enough issues with my existing relations."

Yamagata simply arched an eyebrow as response, given that the thought of having a mistress was not unheard of at their social rank and less unheard of at higher ranks. In these new and more liberated times, there was even word that higher-ranked ladies had begun taking on their own secondary relationships, which was not an unexpected happenstance on the face of it. Powerful people attracted the opposite gender with about the same frequency that a magnet attracted steel shavings - the question that remained was what a powerful person did with those 'groupies' when they were drawn in. Just as the tales of the Red Sonja or the Casanova had made for salacious reading in centuries past, they were effectively true in spirit back then, and the same spirit held true to this modern age.

"From an army standpoint, what would you suggest?" Tanaka asked after swallowing a goodly ration of his pride. He was supposed to be the area's foremost expert at finding people who did not want to be found; having to ask for advice was as close to an admission to failure as one could get without an outright resignation.

"In all military terms, the operative concept is an old American altruism: if you can see it, you can hit it; if you can hit it, you can kill it. The hard part becomes seeing it to begin with." Yamagata was silent for more than a minute, working over multiple thought processes relating to the issue. He finally broke down and admitted his internal dread: "I don't see a conventional response that won't get a lot of people killed before we get a lucky break."

"Feh. I figured as much." If the Inspector could sound any more disgruntled, how was lost on the Major General. "What about unconventional means?"

"Suggesting?" Enichi prompted.

"You had a miko out here last month, one that could sense the aura behind the attacks. Do you have any that can sense the actual demon?" Chief Inspector Tanaka asked with forlorn hope.

_Shōshō _Yamagata opened his mouth to answer, paused a second, and closed it. It was a quarter of a minute before he opened up again to respond properly. "I...don't really know the answer to that question, Tanaka-san. I'll ask Marshall Yamamoto to ask his sister if they have anyone of that skillset in the ranks of the miko."

"All things considered, if we do find her, we will also need someone or something to kill it. This is not a normal foe, I doubt normal combat methods would work."

-x-x-x-

(20 March 2041, 0515 Hours)  
(Rebel underground base, Northern Sao Paulo, Brazil)

One of the first things Eric had been introduced to in the rebel base was the physical training room on the first floor of the base. It had not taken him long to understand the utility of each piece of gear, but the one he immediately grooved to was the neoprene striking post. It was similar to a post set up by Shiori in his days of training and not unlike a post he set up for his siblings to practice on, though the modern copy was different in that it absorbed shock in the same way that a human body would absorb impact from weapons. This made the training all the more real for Eric, in that he now had to compensate for the recoil absorption from the neoprene.

After a warmup round and the first (actual combat) round with it, Eric had decided that a training area upgrade was in order. "_**Particles **__**of **__**Existence**__**, **__**motions **__**of **__**material**__**, **__**coalesce **__**into **__**an **__**Object **__**Copy**_," Eric chanted after a short pause to relearn the spell in question. With his finger against the training post, a copy was created on the far side of it from where Eric was standing, allowing him the use of two targets for his sword training.

"_Yob __tvoyu __maht_," (1) Eric heard from behind himself, which caused him to glance backwards to determine who had snuck up on him. He considered that the Russian was one of a handful in the unit that actually had enough stealth skill to successfully sneak up on him. "Can that work on anything?"

"It has limitations," Eric admitted.

"Even after your demonstrations, I still thought it was...illusion? Now, you create a physical object...and it is not an illusion." To prove his theory, Vladimir took a pair of light jabs at the new assembly; it rocked with the hits, meaning it was not secured to the ground as was the original, but it was otherwise the same aluminum-and-neoprene striking post.

"Illusions can be done, but they have limited use and can be disbelieved by an awares target," Eric admitted as he began repositioning the new striking post. "Physical attacks are the preference, not mental attacks. If I will give harm, I will do it completely and thoroughly."

Vladimir chuckled at the admonition. "Considered psychological warfare?" he asked after Eric sited the new striking post.

"I do not understand," Eric admitted as he prepared for his next set of exercises. "Do war on someone's mind?"

"No, do war on the mental state of the entire enemy force," the Spetsnasz trooper declared. "You have already been doing it with your spell attacks. Every kill you deliver, every strange new way of dying you introduce, scares them more and more. I have heard of desertions in the Nazi ranks and increased transfers away from Sao Paulo in the Japanese forces."

"I was unaware of this," Eric groused. From a bum's perspective, things had changed little on the streets of Sao Paulo, though he figured the rebels would have better information on the subject. "How widespread are the fears?"

"Over half of the invaders, best as we can tell," Vladimir noted after Eric began his enhanced training routine of taking strikes to two different target posts now. Much as his butcher job on the gang-bangers in days prior, the Spetsnasz trooper was beyond impressed with the sword-work of this new addition to the team. Unlike an untrained person, Vladimir knew not to ask the asinine question of why Eric trained against multiple targets - real combat did not afford a soldier the opportunity of fighting just one foe, all the more so when fighting primarily sword-to-sword.

"This is an interesting result of my actions," Eric conceded after he finished his quick-kill routine on the paired targets. "I knew my actions would eventually engender fear in my targets, but I was not expecting it so thoroughly or so quickly."

"I can guess that if you began adding more ways to die to your routine, things would get even more frightening than they presently are," Vladimir said in Russian, something he expected would not be understood by their new comrade.

Without realizing the change of language, Eric responded in literate but accent-neutral Russian. "I can do that, though it will take preparation and practice time. Combat spellcraft is a powerful force to use; misuse or improper use could kill friend, foe and bystander all in a single stroke."

"How the hell do you know Russian language?" Vladimir asked in the stated language.

"What?" Eric retorted, then realized the proper bent of the question almost immediately. "I have multiple enchanted relics with the ability to translate languages, both spoken and read," he replied evenly. "There are spells to do the same thing, though on a less-than-permanent timeframe."

"Fucking insane," Vladimir groused. "I need a drink already."

"How many ways can you kill someone?" Eric looked to the speaker, and was somewhat unsurprised to see the former Cartel hitman just inside the entry to the training area.

"There are literally tens of thousands of combat spells, some for battlefield effect, most for direct infliction of trauma or fatality."

"How can you remember them all?" Carlos gaped as he approached the striking posts. "And when did we get a second striking post?"

"When the sorcerer cloned the original striking post," Vladimir answered the second question with a wry expression.

"I do not pretend to ever have a chance of memorizing all the possible spells I may use," Eric returned the conversation to immediate affairs. "I retain knowledge of those spells that have immediate utility to me; to duplicate this post, I had to research the copying spell before I could do so."

"I'd think a copying spell would be damn useful," Carlos replied. "In fact, I can think of dozens — shitloads — of uses for that kind of skill. Even some pertaining to stuff we do around here."

"_**Particles **__**of **__**Existence**__**, **__**motions **__**of **__**material**__**, **__**coalesce **__**into **__**an **__**Object **__**Copy**_" Eric repeated the chant, this time touching the copy of the original striking post. Much as the first time, a new one-for-one copy of the post was created on the far side of the post from Eric. "Part practice, part preparation for further practice with a blade," the mage explained his motive for repeating the copy process.

"Hardcore," Carlos gaped. "Fucking hardcore."

"Hey, let's get him to 'copy' some of the MG '42s later today, maybe some ammo. Who knows when we'll need 'em," Vladimir opined.

"Damn good idea. Let's float that with Tabitha this evening."

"It is a support skill," Eric said with a nod, giving credence to his consideration that wizardry was not a primary combat skill unless one had a seriously big pair of balls...or a death-wish. With nothing more said, he repositioned the new post to create a triangle between the first two and the newcomer, then began a new training routine.

-x-x-x-

(3 April 2041, 1700 Hours)

(Imperial Japanese Garrison, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

"Your quarters, Priestess Takamachi," the new Colonel of the garrison escorted her to the door of the Bachelorette BOQ. "If there is anything needed, the number for Maintenance is posted with the phones."

"Thank you, _Taisa_, I should be alright for now," Hitomi Takamachi gave a curt bow to the Colonel, who was technically of the same effective social station as she. It was a formality due his rank and command over the station, though everyone in the South American command knew he was assigned here because he was a political flunky and had less than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the onslaught of this 'demon' that was slaughtering the local garrisons. In operational sense, it was perfectly logical that the 'operators' would assign a political hack to a command that was being slowly consumed by a supernatural force, given that the real (read: effective) officers would be needed elsewhere.

She received her travel bag and sword from the Warrant Officer that was technically her assigned escort for her mission here. The remainder of her baggage would be delivered in a cargo convoy tomorrow, and in this case she had packed heavy for the trip unlike prior investigations. The ready expectation of all her coworkers was for a long hunt and a difficult battle, and time away from home necessitated some manner of personal supplies that the military normally didn't stock (such as her choice of uniform).

There was something clearly wrong in this area, though she highly doubted it was a demon so much as it was a lesser threat. Still, the nagging sense of the unusual had permeated the air since she entered town, and the video evidence of those kills executed so far was compelling beyond all compare. Something — she could guess it was sorcery of some fashion — was making things hellish for the garrisons, and each side had called upon their best investigative personnel to try and bring a stop to the attacks.

"I'll be bunking in with you, lady Hitomi," the Warrant said. "Sakura Rennei, class of '39. I would have joined the Miko if I wasn't drafted out of high school."

"Not many want the duties of a Miko nowadays," Hitomi said with complete calmness, though even to the Warrant Officer it was evident her mind was elsewhere. Sakura took it as an indirect request to give Hitomi some quiet time, and simply bowed out to prepare her quarters.

Inside her mind, the problem was not so much the existence of the demon as it was dealing with it. Unlike the inspectorate, Hitomi knew this was the work of one Inari, not multiple. Inari were not particularly jealous or territorial, but all study of old legend seemed to point out their scarcity and as such their self-imposed segregation. By analysis of attack pattern and timing, the actions taken in Sao Paulo were easily capable of one free-roaming fox-demon, especially if said fox was a generalist with her magic instead of a specialist or elementalist.

"Where do we want to start tomorrow?" Hitomi asked her escort after a minute of silence.

"Milady?" the Warrant Officer asked for a repeat.

"What are our options for beginning the investigation tomorrow?" Hitomi decided to change the tack of her planning and hence her question.

"Well, really, the only solid lead we have is the attack points, milady," Warrant Officer Rennei replied evenly. "We could begin our investigation there, though I think I won't be much help"

"I expect as much," Hitomi replied evenly. It was not so much an indictment against her escort as it was admission that she would be doing most of the high-value investigation and analysis on her own. Such was the price of having a special talent, she figured.

Sakura did not take the reply as an insult. "I'll take notes and keep an eye on the people around us. You worry about the attacks, milady."

This caused Hitomi to look up from her task of sorting her laundry and personal effects into her quarters. "Is the populace going to be a problem?"

"Usually not, milady, but in these lands we need to be careful. It only takes one rebel with a silenced pistol to make things lethal for us."

"Oh," the miko grumped. She had seen some overt hostility from foreign parties over the years, but none so much as to threaten her life at any given time. She wasn't exactly sheltered in the order of shrine maidens, but Hitomi figured even the most hardened of rebels was not likely to kill a priestess without very good reason.

"Who knows? Maybe doing this investigation will bring out the Inari that is doing this and we'll get a clear shot at it to begin with," the Warrant Officer said with a hint of brevity to voice.

"Doubtful," Hitomi answered. "Priestess Yamamoto would have been more likely to garner her attention than we will."

The BOQ apartment was quiet for several minutes as the two officers continued preparing their individual bunks in separate bedrooms. "What if it is a male? Can we keep him?"

"Wait...what?" Hitomi asked, taken aback by the question.

"Serious. If it is a male, can we keep him?"

_Pervert_, Hitomi thought but did not say. The bent of her intention was quite clear to the miko. In about the same fashion as anime had over-sexualized the position of a miko, the old legends of the Inari and Kitsune had made them out to be very homely of their own right. That said, she had always wondered if there was any truth to either set of rumors / perceptions, though testing for such things would be tricky at best. Her orders were to capture if possible, but all evidence seen so far made that possibility to be very remote.

She decided an easy let-down was in order. "I'll be honest with you, Warrant Officer. My orders say to capture, or if not possible to eliminate the threat. As of right now, I don't think capture is possible."

"Just a thought..." she grumped.

It would be that thought that would cloud their judgment in the coming campaign.

-x-x-x-

(10 April 2041, 2330 Hours)  
(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Brazil)

"Are you serious?" Carlos Sandeira asked in near-shock.

"All that power, and you're not out to annihilate the Nazis? Are you freaking insane?" Katy Hoyos asked in a heated whisper.

"I have explained my purpose, and how annihilation is actually detrimental to my duties. As damnable as it is, there may be some persons in their ranks that can be converted — and therein is a necessity of my duties."

"This is freaking insane," Katy continued.

"That said, I cannot force a conversion — those who would walk away of their own choice are it. My primary goal is to break the control of the Nazis and Imperial Japanese, specifically to prevent them mass-murdering people."

"This is _loco_, man, _loco_! You can't leave them alive, they will come back—"

"Enough, you three," Tabitha ordered. "We are supposed to be here to ambush a Japanese patrol." Tabitha would not say that it was a test of loyalty and on Eric's ability to follow orders. So far she had no cause to challenge either, but procedures were pro forma in this case. Everyone was tested in some fashion or another, given the testing weeded out the incapable or the faint-of-heart, neither of which she suspected Eric would be ranked among.

"Four men, long arms, three men with short arms?" Eric asked in a near-whisper, given the men in question were technically within direct line of sight to the building they were concealed in. It had taken a few days of intensive training, but Eric had learned the descriptions and purposes of the weapons carried by his erstwhile foes.

"Those four are it," Tabitha confirmed. "Daniel?" she prompted.

"Only living souls in the area are those four and ourselves. We could do them noisy and nobody would notice," the psionic said.

"Except for the SDF towers they put up," Carlos groused. SDF Sensor Towers (**S**ound **D**irection **F**inding) were tuned to the unique acoustic signature of gunfire and could find a shooter's location to within 10 meters. More than one rebel cell had found out that an unsilenced weapon was a magnet for SS rapid-reaction forces.

"Now what?" Katy asked, almost frustrated to the point of shouting.

"Eric? Can you kill them without destroying their equipment?" Tabitha asked.

"Possibly," Eric hedged. He did not know if the spells he had for such a purpose were usable on a group, given that most of his work was of the trauma-inflicted kill variety and more frequently used on only a single person. "Library, eject book 'Spellcraft Of Lethality And Mortality,' " Eric ordered of his library relic.

"Should I be more worried that such a book exists, or that he knows the book's title by heart?" Katy asked Daniel after Eric opened the tome up to begin a quick-check.

"I'm not worried one way or the other," Daniel said with all manner of confidence.

"A book for every imaginable spellcraft purpose exists," Eric groused quietly, partly to sate the expected question and partly to remind the others of the presence of known enemies. "I have found tomes in my library dedicated to purpose for which I never even considered utility. Or to purpose I never wanted utility."

"Anything?" Carlos asked after the patrol crossed in front of the abandoned house they were concealed in.

"I have something," Eric replied. "Now we verify it works at this distance," the Mage edged toward the window to obtain the necessary line of sight to use the spell. "_**Whereupon **__**the **__**moon **__**rises**__**, **__**a **__**shadow **__**crosses **__**the **__**land**__**. **__**In **__**lands **__**of **__**starlight**__**, **__**the **__**blade **__**of **__**a **__**reaper **__**reflects **__**the **__**eyes **__**of **__**eternity**__**. **__**The **__**silence **__**of **__**darkness **__**cloaks **__**the **__**truth **__**of **__**Existence**__**; **__**draw **__**from **__**life **__**to **__**give **__**life**__**, **__**draw **__**from **__**life **__**to **__**take **__**life**__**. **__**Shadows **__**heed **__**my **__**pact**__**; **__**eyes **__**of **__**eternity**__**, **__**draw **__**the **__**mortal **__**coil **__**of **__**those **__**viewed **__**with **__**Shadow **__**Silence **__**Strike**_," the wizard completed the lengthy chant for the instant-kill spell.

"Did it—whoa," Carlos gasped, as the squad continued marching for a half-second before the seven men simply collapsed down to the ground, unmoving.

"That chant was different," Daniel noted with a quizzical expression.

"The necessities of combat spellcraft require very shortened chants, most of which can be executed before one sets foot in battle," Eric noted. "You leave only the activation word or phrase of such spells, in that you may use them on demand. The lethal spell I just used can be used in combat, but it has extensive limitations; it is mostly a spell for executions, not battle."

"We have gear to collect," Tabitha reminded her subordinates. "Our ride should be here shortly; I want them stripped of usable material before the van pulls up."

"Yes, milady," Eric replied immediately. He was not the first to stand, but was not the last on his feet among the five. As he descended the stairs in the house, the mage took the time to return the book of instant-kill spells to his library.

"Can you make one of those things to store anything?" Katy asked.

"It is possible," Eric noted. "This is specialized for written materials, that I can access them from inside the organization illusion or may eject them to read. A storage system for general objects is possible, but you would have to eject the stored object before it could be used, without exception."

"How long would it take to make one? And can I learn how to do it?" Katy pressed.

"It would take several hundred hours of spellcasting," Eric answered truthfully, going on a baseline gauge of his existing library relic.

"Several hundred? Serious?" Tabitha asked in shock.

"It requires two days of ten hour casting sessions just to prepare an object for the enchantments, and the actual properties of each device require far more spellcrafting than a paltry twenty hours. Once you have built your device concept and completed the enchantments, it requires another twenty hours or so to 'seal' the relic device so the enchantments do not expend themselves during use or are not easily obliterated."

"Good God," Carlos whined. "So much for you putting some enhancement on my machete."

"It is not impossible," Eric replied. "I could, in theory, apply a batch enchantment to several objects at once, giving each device the same series of properties at a slight reduction in per-device power buildup. Say, a machete and five swords all at once," Eric said. "It does not reduce the minimum expenditure of time to do so, but it does reduce the repetition requirement if the same results are needed in duplicate."

"We have a lot to learn," Tabitha said as she knelt by the side of the deceased squad sergeant. "Carlos, police up the rifles. Katy, remove their vests and leg rigs. Eric, you have their backpacks. Daniel, overwatch."

-x-x-x-

(14 April 2041, 0015 Hours)  
(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Brazil)

"Go on my mark," the _Taii _(Captain) ordered. "Execute, now, now, now."

"_Hai_!" the demolitions expert shouted as he tripped the detonator for the breaching charge. It technically killed any hope of stealth, but the reverse consideration for this operation was that the enemy was too numerous to be able to maintain stealth for long. The realistic end of the operation plan was to blow in loud and hard, kill them all, and pick up the pieces afterward.

"Breaching!" the lead assaulter shouted as he entered the room and immediately moved right to begin clearing his sector. The second assaulter followed him in and immediately went left, her assault rifle up and scanning for targets in the entryway area.

"Secondary breach executed!" a Sergeant informed the operations teams after another breaching charge was used, this time on a solid wall to allow access to the building without the use of a common entryway.

"Clear!" the assaulters in front of the Captain shouted, signifying the room and adjacent accesses were now devoid of opposition.

"Move it up, Marines!" the Captain ordered. "I want them all dead!"

"_Hai__!_" the Imperial Japanese Marines replied immediately, moving in several directions to begin challenging and reducing the remaining rebels in the stronghold.

"It is a wondrous, deadly ballet," the Waffen SS Observer with the Captain noted. Behind him was a lower-ranking SS Officer, though her position was of SS Paranormal Investigator.

"It is brutal beyond compare," the Captain rebuked the Nazi puke next to herself. "A battle of swords is a deadly dance. This is nothing more than a street brawl between two who are drunkards on a power-trip."

"I have always wondered why the Japanese are so intent on seeing their end in a stylized battle," the Waffen SS Major groused.

"These kids, our frontline soldiers, do not. There is little Bushido in their training, no respect for an honorable fight. Then again, with our policies over the past century, we have eliminated all the parties that could have given us an honorable fight." The Captain sighed. It was not uncommon to hear of a lady soldier in the past of Japan that could — or did — manhandle her otherwise male opposition. She wanted to challenge the greatest man on planet — whoever that may be — and prove that a proper Japanese lady could still do the job. Only problem with her desire was that few such men existed any more, and almost all were on her side (or existed among her titular allies, the SS).

"Those days are truly long past," the Major commented.

"If I may, why is a SS Paranormal officer interested in these rebels?" the _Taii_ asked after another two rooms were cleared and four guerrillas were slain.

"Our present thinking is the 'demon' may be working with or a full member of a rebel cell in this area. Quick identification and neutralization of the demon would be beneficial to all."

Captain Mei Matsushita visibly sighed, though was not heard over the sound of gunfire. "I have seen the reports, even the video. This is the real world we live in, SS Officers. Fantasies about demons might be nice to bandy about in the officer's club, but in my experience these guerrillas will do anything to scare people. With a little industrial lighting and magic tricks, anything is possible."

"I don't have 100 percent conclusive evidence it is or is not a demon, Captain," the SS Lieutenant replied evenly. The Major could tell she was restraining herself from verbally bitch-slapping the arrogant IJA Captain. "That counts in both directions — right now I can't prove it was a demon, and I can't prove it was not a demon. I'm not going to ask you to look for it or fight it — just keep your arse under cover if you see something that looks or feels wildly out of place."

"That is a trick question, is it not?" the Captain replied in clear tease to the Lieutenant. "The most straight-laced military organization on planet — the vaunted Waffen SS — has a Paranormal Division. Now we speak of something out of place?"

"You're right," Lieutenant Teane replied evenly. "And occasionally I actually get to do my assigned job function. Most the time, I am just a mobile Inspector for the SS Inspectorate General Division."

"Captain, building is clear. Four dead rebels," the command Sergeant for her team reported.

The Captain nodded twice, thinking about something. "The four dead, was there anything unusual about the deceased?"

"No, Captain, just four garden-variety rebels, nothing special. Two had arms when we entered their room, one fired a couple shots and wounded my junior man, the other two were unarmed but moving toward guns and grenades."

"This is nothing special," Mei said with clear dejection in voice. "Lieutenant, Major, we will inspect the bodies to verify there are no demons among the dead."

-x-

"This is interesting," Nicole Whitman said. "That uniform on the Nazi wench is different."

"Don't recognize it," Anita Rockholm replied with cheer. "We could knock her out, see what the newsies have to say about her death," the spotter of the sniper duo opined.

"No, too much risk, even from this range," Nicole answered for that plan. That they were looking from 600 meters east of the assault site said volumes of the IJA presence in the area. "I've already taken some pictures, all that remains is to see what the guys back at base have to say."

"Including the new guy?"

"I'm still not convinced he's isn't a plant," Nicole declared with frustration after a minute of silence.

"Oh yes, he is a plant," Anita said. "A plant from the Norse Gods, sent to us to kick unholy amounts of ass. You think the Nazis would have developed his kind of skills without bragging about it somewhere along the lines?"

"The Nazis, no," Nicole said as she began breaking down and packing up her surveillance gear. A sniper's duty was far more reconnaissance and infiltration than it was shooting — but in most circles people (erroneously) considered a sniper to be nothing more than a very good rifleman. So far, the new guy in the unit was leaning in that direction just the same, but Nicole wanted to make sure he did not make that mistake in judgment.

"Oh, so you think he is an IJA plant?" Anita snorted loudly. "They do have those miko that can control fire and wind and similar, but they have nothing on Eric. Another point against: shrine maidens call on spirits to do their dirty work, Eric does his on his own merits."

"Circumstantial," Nicole rebuffed her spotter.

"Well, the biggest tell-tale that he isn't miko or trained by them is scale," Anita countered. "It may take a miko an hour to whip up some flames to the point of burning down a structure, as we've seen on television a few times."

"True," Nicole had seen the same programs and was interested in such a skill as a curiosity, but was less than impressed with it as a battle ability.

"Eric has already identified a dozen ways that he can torch or crater an entire city block in less time than it takes the average miko to hike skirt, drop panties, squat, and shit a brick." Nicole gaped as Anita held up her hands to her sides, palm up. "One hour, one house," and she shook her left hand; "Ten seconds, twenty houses," and her other hand closed up into a fist. "I don't think there is any major commonality of method between those two," she said, using one of Vladimir's favorite tricks of analysis against her shooter-friend.

"Okay, you win this round," Nicole conceded. "But if he is a plant, I'll drill him myself and violate the body."

"I love the way you think some days," Anita said with a smile.

-x-x-x-

(17 April 2041, 2130 Hours)  
(Rebel Base, Apartment areas above underground facility)

"If I am reading this correct, you create a composite spell by way of creating a 'container spell', loading it with the desired spells or effects, build a unique enchantment, and seal the 'container'. Is that right?" Tabitha asked after she set down the book she was reading.

"I have heard of it in practice, but I have never done so," Eric admitted. "One of the most famous applications thereof is the _Indignation_ spell — it is engineered to destroy demons and supernatural beings, and thus requires natural element, holy element, defense penetration abilities, and all at very high power."

"You can't use that spell, can you?" Kari Porom asked.

"No, last I tried it failed to work properly for me," the old Mage answered. "That was before I began training my relatives, and thus saw a significant jump in my own skills. It might be successful now, it might not."

"And if it is?" Tabitha asked.

"I would need to be careful how I use it," Eric replied evenly. "_Indignation_ is an 'area of effect' attack spell, with the ability to cause square miles in destruction at higher levels of skill. It would be visually impressive to watch it in action, but I would not want to be nearby the target that it was used on." Eric would not admit that the necessity of power to cause even a single square mile of destruction with said spell was roughly a third the way up the scale of divine power, but clouding the matter would be detrimental to his existing training projects.

"And if you don't want to be nearby the target, I want to be roughly 300 yards behind you when you do use it," Kari completed the thought. "Here's one, a poison cloud attack."

"No," Tabitha ordered immediately. "No chemical weapons, we are better than the IJA and we do not need that kind of warfare."

"Would you consider a cloud of sleeping gas or paralysis gas?" Eric requested for clarification.

"So long as it does not kill by lethal gas, I will consider it. I've seen people die in chemical warfare attacks; if there is one way I do not want to die, nerve gas is it."

"Understood," Eric answered. He was not particularly fond of the artificial limitation, but would not argue the matter. A poison gas cloud would be highly effective at depopulating a Nazi or IJA base, but there was always more ways to do so, Eric figured.

"Paralysis gas?" Daniel asked.

"Oh yes," Kari announced, then turned her book around to show to Daniel and Tabitha. "And, unlike the killer cloud spell above it, the paralysis gas works on a larger area at lower training."

"Paralyze a regiment and go in?" Tabitha opined to the Mage and the twins. "That kind of ploy would be devastating. How long would we have on the ground if we did it?"

"Hours, depending on how effective the spellcaster is, if I'm reading this right."

"Given it is non-harmful, we will want to test before we stake our lives on the outcome," Eric opined. "It would not serve us well to butcher half a regiment and then the remainder simply stands up while we are working on them."

"He has a point," Kari noted with a droll tone of irony.

"Ever the eternal realist," Tabitha continued Kari's comment.

"With real goals, one must pay attention to objective circumstances," Eric chided the three most active of his first recruits, using another phrase he had gleaned from the Russian. "Still, if the entry is accurate, and if my present skill is sufficient to do as I intend, we could use it on battalion-sized formations without any real risk of my victims regaining mobility before we have slain them all."

"Okay, we can paralyze them, go in, secure or slay them all, and then what?" Tabitha asked.

"Well, once we have them cleared out, we salvage what we want and run home," Daniel suggested.

The room was silent for a few moments. "On consideration, I do not believe it would be that simple."

"Yeah, I'm going to agree with the wizard on this one, there ain't no way in hell it will be that simple," Tabitha opined.

"On second thought, there may be a way to get in and out without ever being seen," Eric noted. "I am by no means a specialist of the art, but there is a section of spellcraft that allows for 'gates' to be formed between locations, and passing to or from either destination is no more challenging than walking through the gates in front of this building."

"How big a gate? Enough for a vehicle?" Tabitha immediately asked.

"It can vary. Much as with the paralysis, I will need to test before I can confirm its utility."

"That is badass," Daniel said with a clear hint of awe, looking over the entries in the book he was reading. "Psychotropic gas - causes widespread hallucinations for those in the affected dia, with varying results depending on the person affected. Effect wears off cleanly after a set time."

"It'd be like LSD without the permanent side effects and applied to a large group across an area," Tabitha groused. "Use it without my permission, and I'll skewer you myself. Use it on me, and you really won't like your fate," she warned with a clear hint of evil intent to her voice.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I had no intention of using it to begin with," Eric said to make his position clear before anyone accused him of deriving bad ideas from Daniel's less-than-mission-oriented research.

"Oh, here, even better," Daniel said. "Flash Gas. Spell to cause the mental component of hot flashes in all persons in affected area. Would that cause people to strip themselves down if it became too much?"

"We have officially achieved the gutter," Tabitha groused. Eric raised an eyebrow in silent query, unsure what she meant by her phrasing.

"Daniel, get your mind back on the task at hand," his sister warned him. "_I_ won't tolerate you doing something like that."

"This is going to be a challenge," Eric bemoaned.

"Oh come now, weren't you interested in the ladies when you were young?" Tabitha asked in jest. Daniel blew him a raspberry for the indirect insult as he interpreted it.

Eric interpreted her question as level, not a joke. "Oh yes, almost married and once promised to return. I do have my share of perversities, but I also know better than to indulge them with wizardry. Such conduct only incites those who wish to burn you at the stake."

"He has a point," Kari said, half-shocked that he would admit to his mental conduct in such a blatant fashion.

"I see why you put such a healthy amount of effort into being stealthy," Tabitha said. "I'm not in a hurry to die, but being burned at the stake sounds like probably the least appealing way to go I can think of."

"Let's make sure we avoid it, and make sure we all are defended from it," Kari fronted to the group. "Never again, never the bias against wizards again." She had heard the minds of people burned to death, and did not want a wizard to be subject to it just for practicing his or her art.

"It will be a necessity of my duty," Eric said. "It is difficult to train people for the necessities of coming duties if they are constantly being torched at the stake."

-x-x-x-

(20 April 2041, 2130 Hours)  
(Manchurian Provinces of Japan, Eastern Military Training Center)

"_Kaze_ Element reads five by five. Go for traffic," Captain Hiroo Tanaka replied immediately to the request for contact.

"_Kaze_ Element, you are cleared hot into kill-box 5. Approach vector 0-3-5 present position. Ordinance release 1500-pound LGB cleared TacCom. Engage targets strike package 4 at first available. Command out."

"Flight, Lead, check in," the flight commander ordered immediately.

"Two," his wingman replied. "Three," the second element commander answered. "Four," the second wingman chimed in. In all, a full check-in took roughly five seconds, better than expected with 'greenhorn' pilots.

"We have business," Hiroo prompted them. "Two, I want you on targets three, four, and five of our package."

"Roger," his wingman replied immediately. It was the work of a few button presses to select the targets in his multi-function display, which then highlighted the targets in his heads-up display for servicing by ordinance.

"Three, you have targets six and seven. Make sure you 'double-tap' target six, I want to verify it is dead."

"_Hai__, __sensei_," the subordinate element commander declared his understanding.

"Four, you have targets one, two, and seven. Make sure your laser designator is active this time," Hiroo reminded the junior pilot of a mishap in her last training exercise and how to avoid it.

"_Hai__, __sensei_, it shall be done," the female pilot answered with more grace than the Commander would have expected from her.

"I have backup position and overwatch. Snap to heading 0-3-5 and reduce altitude to 3-5-hundred meters."

"Making it challenging, _sensei_?" Three asked with an even tone.

"The Russians will not give us the luxury of bombing from 'safe' altitudes. Their MiG-77 and MiG-81 aircraft can hit us all the way up to 4-5-thousand meters with those new high-speed intercept missiles. The older MiG-64 can out-turn the multi-role fighter you are sitting in for close combat maneuvering. Getting down in the weeds may be the only way we have to avoid their 'tender ministrations' when the shooting starts for real. Follow?"

"_Hai_!" all three pilots half-shouted as was expected.

"Prepare to deploy on targets," the Commander ordered.

"Laser is active this time," Four verified.

"My element, deploy at will," Hiroo said for the benefit of his wingman, who had already lined up his laser on the targets.

"Two, bombs away!"

"Three, bombs released!"

"Four, bombs away!"

"Maneuver but keep your lasers on target," the flight commander ordered immediately. It would be a requirement of real operations that anything worth bombing would also have copious amounts of AAA and SAM sites to defend it, and thus ECM and/or maneuvering would need to be used to avoid a terminal case of lead or missile poisoning.

The four fighters ducked in two directions, but the pilots were careful to not rotate too far lest they lose laser guidance lock. All four had been exquisitely trained in the handling of their choice fighter, the Mitsubishi Kami-F2, but none of them maintained illusions. The Russians outnumbered them in the air and on the sea; the battle to come would be a war of pure numbers and ratios. The brutality of China, the destructiveness of America, the resistance of South America, all were expected of the Russians in twofold.

"It is the great irony that Lenin once said the capitalists would bid amongst themselves to sell the communist the rope by which they would hang themselves, but now the communists are the last bastion of non-pacified land on planet." Captain Tanaka mused as he waited for the bombs to hit. "Splash," he grunted just before the first bomb hit its target.

"Looks like we hit all," Four commented after a paltry thirty seconds of waiting for the bombs to hit. "Laser offline," she continued the running joke pertaining to her prior mishap.

"Forget the Soviets, they're mean in their territory, I am worried about the presence of that demon in Sao Paulo," Two said with all the finality of a death sentence.

"Rumors, nothing but sensational rumors," Even to himself, Hiroo's immediate rebuke sounded hollow. His internal denial of the official party line was simple: one attack may be rumors, two attacks may be coincidence, nearly a dozen incidents could not be pawned off to chance or explained away. Especially the latest, a whole infantry squad simply died mid-stride in patrolling an abandoned neighborhood, such could not be frittered away with inane theories or hyperbole. Something was doing a helluva job trying to kill Nazis and IJA in quantity, and was using either forces of nature or sorcery to do it. Possibly both.

"Sir, permission to speak freely?" Four asked.

"You may," the flight commander said warily.

"The incidents in Sao Paulo are past the point of rumors and cover-ups. One of the infantry that was killed by the last attack was brother to my crew chief. He never had a medical problem in his entire life — played soccer as a kid, kendo tournament champion in secondary school, expert marks in physical training in his Basic days. We are supposed to believe that he just randomly died of an otherwise unknown medical problem? And six others at the same time, sir? How asinine do the investigators think they can make the explanations before someone calls them on it?"

"If your response is anything to gauge, I think they may have just hit top end," Hiroo replied candidly. His formation was new and extremely green (Tanaka was the only veteran pilot in the entire wing (2) among the multi-role fighter pilots) but was also surprisingly close knit and candid amongst themselves. It was not uncommon amongst fighter pilots of the IJAF to be a little bit less reserved amongst themselves.

"From the point of the second lightning strike, I knew the incidents were supernatural," the wingman to Hiroo noted with an air of having seen the problem coming. "Lightning is a fairly frequent killer around the world, but pegging two IJA officers in less than a month in the same city is pushing it. Such is not the way to maintain stealth."

"That is arguable," Four commented. "Yes, any reasonable man or woman would conclude that something is seriously wrong in Sao Paulo. Only problem is, _what_ specifically is wrong in Sao Paulo?"

"And that is the heart of the problem. Nobody knows exactly what we are supposed to look for in the lands down south. Without even a reasonable guess as to what we are facing, our investigators would need a lucky break to make it," Three opined.

"_Kaze_ flight, Command, if you are through picking apart our investigation teams in Sao Paulo, we have some more training runs for you," the AWACS controller prompted the pilots.

"Go for _Kaze_ Flight," Hiroo said with a tone of cheerfulness. Whatever was going on in Sao Paulo, he hoped it stayed there and for the time being it did not affect his duties.

-x-x-x-

(21 April 2041, 0005 Hours)  
(Northwestern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Base)

Rather than going down the levels by the stairs, Eric was moving down the cargo lift into the bowels of the base. That he was also helping move material in crates was an interesting but inconsequential side-note to the process; he was about to be let into a 'compartment' for which the rebel cell had worked very hard to defend from all outside eyes. That level of access worried Eric to an extent, given that such secretive measures usually meant something major was afoot.

"Glad to have more hands on this project," Tabitha said. "Moving these materials for the techies is hard work."

"It will be good to have another in on the final phase of the project as well," Vladimir noted. "Maybe the mage can bring some wisdom to the process we haven't thought about."

"Maybe we can have a final vote on the secondary defense measure," Allie Brannock — one of the supposed 'test subjects' of the project — commented. "He does have some experience in the field, no?"

"No joke, comrade," Vladimir said a moment after the bell for the third floor rang. It had not taken the various rebels long to see his sword skills in action against the practice striking posts, and a few of them had made the errant assumption they could do better. It usually took Eric no more than two blows to completely dissuade them of that assumption — Carlos did best among the rebels, lasting four blows against the Durgan swordsman. Tabitha, the sniper team (Eric had not yet been introduced to them, though had seen their handiwork in action), and Vladimir had specifically not challenged him, as they all figured they would not prove a challenge to the very unusual sorcerer.

"And what manner of wisdom is needed from me on this project? Remember, on technological warfare I am not even properly apprenticed yet," Eric admitted his near-complete lack of experience with modern technology with surprising humility to the others on the lift.

"Sometimes, the answer isn't always the newest or the highest technology," Tabitha admitted.

Her answer only served to puzzle the old wizard for the duration of the elevator travel, a status he was sure the two telepath twins were aware of. He had not seen them all day, but he was sure if he was about to be elevated in security access they would be present to verify Eric was not a spy and this event 'unlocked' any internal hidden commands to betray the unit. Such actions were technically difficult for a psionic to do properly, but not impossible as far as Eric had studied on the subject. Himself not a native psionic, Eric was less than interested in the operational difficulties of such actions; the only concern of the wizard was in knowing when someone was trying to do such things to him and how to counter those actions.

_You __are __right__, __we __are __listening_, Kari admitted with an impish mental laugh inside the confines of Eric's mind.

_Not __that __we __expect __to __hear __anything__, __except __a __bit __of __shock __when __you __see __what __you __are __in __for_, Daniel concluded the thought.

_Remind __me __to __work __on __the __discipline __section __of __your __training __some __more__. __In __a __situation __such __as __this__, __you __trust __nobody __until __you __have __verified __it_, Eric thought loud enough to be clearly audible to the twins.

"Twins playing around in your mind?" Tabitha asked after a few moments of silence.

"Not so much playing around, but they are there. Simply had to remind them of some upcoming training based on one of their comments."

"Ah," Tabitha mused. "Should be down to the bottom here in a moment or two."

"Don't cream yourself when you see this, big guy," Allie commented with a hint of playfulness in her voice.

"And that means...what?" Eric asked, though he had his suspicions.

"Oh, nothing, just a newer expression," the technician replied in a clearly coquettish fashion. Given that kind of answer, Eric considered his suspicions confirmed.

_Whatever __it __is__, __it __must __be__ of __such __a __wonderful __and __powerful __form __as __to __incite __the most __base __of __human __reaction__ — __lust_, Eric considered inside his mind. _I __would __dare __to __say __such __a __reaction __would __be __necessarily __different __from __what __she __thinks __would __cause __it __in __me__. __After __all__, __I __play __by __different __rules __from __what __they __consider __normal_.

_You__'__re __not __joking __there__, __old __man_, Kari commented to him telepathically. Eric grimaced involuntarily, given the curt reminder of his own age being twice that of the telepathic commenter.

The elevator stopped with a distinctive double-clang, and after a short warning buzzer the safety gate came open. "C'mon, let's get this out before we introduce you to the fun stuff," Tabitha said before she began moving her own palette jack into the freight assembly area.

It took Allie to assist their commander in moving out their palette jack, but Vladimir and Eric each handled their own heavier units with more aplomb. The transient mage considered it was more of an issue with training and conditioning than the material being moved, a valuable lesson for future reference.

"That is done, shall we move on?" Vladimir prompted. Tabitha waved to move out, and Eric found himself with one lady in front and one lady behind. The path was not hard to memorize, given most of the area on this floor was open for machining processes (with a dozen or so workers in on the project working with heavy metal plates), though a closed-off section with a large door appeared to be their destination.

"Sparks, watch yourselves," one of the technical personnel said before he used a focused flame on a piece of metal nearby their walk path. Eric was cautious to avoid the glowing embers, as were the others.

"Should have another one ready in about thirty hours," the area manager declared as the group passed by. "Welcome to the new guy!"

"Thank ye," Eric replied as he passed.

"In here," Vladimir opened the door to the closed-off area. The area inside was pitch-black, which somewhat did not surprise Eric. No need to light an area that was not occupied, given that the electric power needed to charge the lights cost money.

"Why are the lights off?"

"Breaker blew," Carlos' voice reached out from the darkness. Eric gauged it to be toward the center of the closed-off area, if the partition in the machine room ran the full length of the area.

"I got it," Vladimir groused. A small hand-held light was used to find a metal service box on the nearby wall. With two clicks, the lights began powering up again, with their rather distinctive drone as the power systems inside the lights began activating.

When the lights snapped on, Eric was looking toward where Tabitha was standing, but immediately he noticed the bank of partitions and obvious targets in some kind of training range. Eric had heard there was a 'shooting range' on this floor, though this was the first time he had seen a target gallery dedicated for the use of firearms. It was an exemplary setup for ranged combat by his first judgment on the matter, though the ceiling was a bit low for proper archery.

"I would like your opinion on that," and Tabitha pointed to something behind and to Eric's left.

Eric looked in the direction she was pointing, and when his eyes tracked in on the object she indicated, his first and immediate reaction was to reach for one of his magicked swords. "What manner of armor is that?" Atrebas immediately asked. "And is it friend?"

"I am inside, of course it is friendly," Carlos said from the armor.

"That is our major project, Eric. Powered Infantry Armor, heavy enough to withstand most common ballistic weapons, light enough to be practical for manufacture and transport," Tabitha began her briefing, convinced that if it spooked Eric it would do the same to nearly anyone who faced it.

"That is...pure metal?" Eric asked as he approached it. With a cautious hand, he tapped on the left shoulder plate. "How can this be moved? There is more metal here than exists in a company of Durgan Bladesmen."

"Here," and Carlos reached with his left hand to pull the forearm plate off his right arm. Below the plate existed a network of some kind of skeins of fiber — at first glance, Eric thought they were mere ropes, until one of them flexed on its own. The way it moved reminded him of muscles, on the few times he had seen exposed muscles flexing in an exposed wound.

"Myomer artificial musculature. Apply a high-voltage electrical charge, something like controlled lightning, and it flexes;" Carlos put animation to Tabitha's explanation. "With enough of this muscle aiding the trooper inside, it is possible to move these tons of metal with a little difficulty."

"This will resist enemy weapons?"

"Not all enemy weapons," Vladimir hedged. "Just their infantry weapons. Heavy cannons, heavy missiles will still kill you."

Eric walked around the armor, examining, testing, even using his Gladius to test the thinner base-plate armor sections that were exposed (mercifully few). "What that I had such armor when I was a line Bladesman, I could have swept hundreds before me per battle, with little to no hazard of being injured or slain. Though, if a trooper is laid out, how hard is it for they to regain footing?"

"Carlos?" Tabitha asked.

"Here, stand aside," the Colombian responded. When he had a clear path, he simply dropped prone forward with a terrible racket. It took a few seconds after that before he began moving to stand up, and he was not very fast to his feet, but Eric did note that his movements were very stable — a horse would have been hard pressed to pull him down to the ground again while standing up.

"Objections, mister wizard?" Allie Brannock asked.

"Only one. Where is the shield?"

"That settles that," Carlos answered. Eric figured it some form of running issue between the parties involved in the armor work.

"Welcome to the Armored Infantry program, Eric Atrebas," Tabitha said.

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence)

Other prisoners had been sacrificed to the altar of their religious rituals, but some had been held for a special activity pertaining to the Sun God, whose name Crystal figured they would forever have a problem pronouncing. Both figured that their escape from the Greek Gods was simply temporary respite, and that they would forever be the playthings of the Gods in one form or another.

Feeding the jaguar totems of the Sun God would be their fate, or so the mystics around them planned. Of course, the first and most effective 'bad' habit the sisters had picked up from their prodigal elder brother was the art of planning, and their plans were naturally different. "Still have your ring, sister?" Melane asked as they marched toward the ceremonial 'games' pit.

"Oh yes," Crystal admitted. "I am ready."

"We have seen these beasts; when they come, we strike as they stalk," Melane put voice to her intentions. Given that she was speaking in their native language of Greek, it was not understood by their jailers.

"Oh, I am ready for this one. What is your intention?"

"Lightning, pure and simple," Melane admitted.

"I was reading through some combat conjurations, and have a spectacular one to hit them with. Make sure you stay behind me, it will have a wide sweep."

"Show time," Melane said after another hundred paces of march, when they were led to a gate standing between themselves and an open area. Their wait had been short between initial capture and offering as a sacrifice, though Crystal thought this more of a spectacle to watch beautiful ladies be shredded and digested by large cats. It was no more or less macabre than the Roman 'games' of Gladiatorial competition, though this time it was Crystal's hide on the line and she wanted no part of that.

"Honor the God of the Sun with your death, ladies. He will be very interested in you," one of the Jaguar Warriors declared with some gusto to the gaggle of girls selected for today's 'sacrifice'.

"There will be sacrifices today, of that I rest assured," Melane said in an undertone that slightly chilled her sister.

The gate came up and two more Jaguar Warriors assured that no stragglers were left in the undercroft of the temple sacrifice / games pit. Crystal was one of the first out, Melane was one of the last, but both knew the plan and both knew to pick their positions with an eye toward maximizing survivability in a group of seven otherwise defenseless ladies.

Crystal was shocked at the sight of the spectacle that was to transpire today. Around her, in the area of the temples, thousands upon thousands of people stood ready to witness death and to exalt their Sun God. "So many, to see us sacrificed," one of the other ladies involved in today's sacrifice said almost breathlessly, though it was easily translated by Crystal's ring to her native language.

"What do you think, sister? Four apiece?" Melane asked as the gaggle of ladies (themselves included) bunched up in the center of the ceremony / game pit, physically as far away from the cage areas that held an indeterminate but significant amount of predators.

"More than that we will be hard-pressed to handle," Crystal replied. "They will move quickly to surround us when released."

"We will need to be fleet with our spellcraft, then." Melane's eyes ranged up to the sky. "Cloudless. They will know."

"That is half the point," Crystal reminded her sister.

"Not the observers, the Gods."

"Oh," Crystal grumped, suddenly aware of a gaping hole in her operation plan: the God to which they would be sacrificed was not likely to be happy with a pair of stray witches stopping the sacrifice the hard way.

"So it begins," Melane said with a hint of excitement. The yelps of panic among the ladies condemned to this sacrifice only provided a secondary warning that the cages were now opened, the beasts unleashed to dine well.

Much as the two suspected, the six jaguar released into the opening began their actions by stalking the gaggle of ladies, testing the nerve of their erstwhile prey to see who broke first. As any reasonable human would expect, the ladies broke first; two tried to bolt for the ranks of the observers, but it was a hopeless gesture and only sped up the inevitable. Both ladies were struck down rapidly, becoming the feast of two of the largest of the jaguar they were facing in the ring.

"I don't think there is a secondary way out," Crystal confirmed. "You begin, sister."

"_**The **__**skies **__**of **__**eternity **__**shall **__**reach **__**to **__**the **__**lands **__**of **__**forever **__**with **__**an **__**arc **__**of **__**Lightning**_," Melane executed her chant, singling out the largest feasting feline and dumping pure electrical power into it, and by extension the shrieking lady under its paws. The arc of lightning caused the three remaining sacrifice victims to shriek in fright and knocked two of them down, but Crystal and Melane were mostly unaffected except by the deafening thunderclap. Of her target, the jaguar was sundered to bloody scraps and redistributed for yards in every direction; the lady was burned to death by the discharge, but not dismembered.

"_**Rocks **__**shift**__**, **__**reform **__**the **__**structures **__**under foot **__**and **__**build **__**a **__**Crystal **__**Spire **__**Palisade**_," Crystal ordered of the stone she stood on by way of her spellcraft. With her hand, she pushed forward and toward three of the jaguar that were now starting to realize that these humans were something different. The sound that came to mind in Crystal's head was that of shattering steel, though the amber crystal generated by the attack had no metallic component to it whatsoever. A palisade of the massive spires formed and shot out of the ground at a 45 degree angle from the ground below her hand and toward the jaguar, though this first wave struck no target. A second palisade formed below the tips of the first wave and continued in the arc away from Crystal, and this second palisade did achieve results: one skewered jaguar. Less than a quarter-second after the second palisade formed, a third took shape of smaller spires, these only slightly smaller than a human, and again continued the inertia started by the first two ranks; this third discharge took out the remaining two cats on her side of arena and even threatened the second of the feeding cats. A fourth palisade took shape, though it achieved no result and appeared to be the end of the reaction.

"_**The**__** skies **__**of **__**eternity **__**shall **__**reach **__**to **__**the **__**lands **__**of **__**forever **__**with **__**an **__**arc **__**of **__**Lightning**_," Melane repeated her first attack, this time targeting the nearest of the jaguar to her location. The spell struck directly and once again sundered the beast into a bloody mess from pure energy transfer, though this time chance would send the high priest a message with her attack. The head of the beast landed nearly at the foot of the high priest himself, still smoldering from the attack that had severed it from its mortal body.

No further attack was needed; the last of the felines had fled back to its cage, attempting to put as much distance between itself and the nightmare it now found itself in. "Check left!" Melane shouted, though this time she unleashed the power of her ring so it would be translated to Aztec for everyone in the vicinity to hear.

"Left clear, no threat!" Crystal reported. "Check right!"

"Right clear, no threat!" Melane completed the traditional Durgan verification of the battlefield.

"Sheath 'em, this battle is...done?" Crystal hesitated on the last word, as a lightning strike had detonated in the northwest corner of the ceremony pit. The flow of lightning had formed into the glowing figure of a tall man, who continued to glow faintly yellow even after the lightning was done. "I think you win this one, Melane, for what it is worth."

"This is a victory I would much rather not face," Melane grumped.

The being stepped forward from the lightning shell that it came manifest in, and immediately both the Atrebas sisters knew they were facing a God of some kind. The distorted face and green skin, fangs and lightning sparking from the eyes told enough tale that this was a supernatural being of some kind.

"Agreed," Crystal said in a near-whisper as the God looked around the assembled worshippers and potential sacrifices.

"Who among you dares to call upon my lightning without the proper invocation?" the God asked.

The three remaining sacrificial ladies fled to the south, two of them shrieking in abject terror of being in the presence of a God. The only thing to the south was the undercroft of the temples, which were standing open due to the disruption of the sacrifice. Crystal would have admitted that she wanted to join them in flight, but her discipline prevented her from moving – she wanted to face this one head-on, because their mission was not to run away.

"My hand called the lightning, Highness," Melane spoke up with some gusto, internally convinced that this was probably going to end badly regardless of how she played it. "I am Melane Atrebas, disciple of the Fates. I stand at the ready for judgment."

"Ah, the Fates send you...I believe I remember some noise among the Greek Gods about a family that had been turned against their pantheon. Interesting, and now you are in Aztec territory."

"Do you want their heads as sacrifice, Great One?" The High Priest of Tlaloc asked as he approached the bowl of the sacrifice grounds.

"These two will not be sacrificed," the God replied immediately. "No, these two serve the Gods directly. You will treat them as your ruler from now on, is this understood?"

This order took aback the entire clergy of the temples. "Great One, what...who are they? Why are they so revered that you would give them such responsibility?"

The God simply disappeared, but Crystal saw the flash of his reappearance at the Temple dedicated to him. "He moved location to that temple," Melane noted, pointing toward the God in the distance.

With two hands on the base of his statue, the God created a massive illusory projection of himself in the skies above the temple. Without doubt, everyone within several hundred miles of the temple would easily see his visage, but Crystal was not so sure about what was to be heard.

_Listen well, Aztec nation, for I am Tlaloc and my word governs nature_, the voice of the God boomed throughout everyone's mind by way of wide-range telepathy. _There is a war going on throughout the cosmos. It has raged for a long time, longer than the Gods have lived, some days silent, some days terrible in fury. A group of beings known as the Fates have seen most of this war played out, and they try to stop it through agents and disciples. Two such agents have been spirited here by the Fates, away from an arrogant cadre of Gods that would seek to interrupt this plan on false pretense. The Aztec Gods have traditionally sided with the Norns, the Fates themselves, in trying to resist this war. Today, the Aztec Nation will side with the disciples of the Norns by my command, and the disciples will show you all a path to victory against those who would destroy us all. Ladies of the Atrebas, will you show the Nation how to face the Darkness_? The question took aback both sisters, but both also knew there could be only one answer.

"We accept the assignment, Highness," Crystal replied immediately. Her words were echoed to the entire Nation by Tlaloc's telepathic broadcast.

_Will you stand in stead, guardians of the Nation of Aztec, until your assignment is completed_? He asked after a moment.

"We shall post guard over the nation unto the Days of Ragnarok or until you find someone better, Highness," Melane replied, throwing in a sop to the fact that they probably were not the best and could be replaced if necessary.

_Will you stand as our mortal representatives, as representative of all divinities, unto the Nation and to all who would stand upon our lands_? He asked in continuation.

"We stand at the service of the Gods, Highness," Crystal replied immediately.

_AZTEC_! The mental voice of Tlaloc boomed throughout the entire world, not just the lands of the Aztec. _Before you stand the new Guardians. Let them teach you of how to do battle against the Darkness, as you shall teach them of reverence for life! The Fates have called upon this nation to stand against the Darkness, will you honor the Gods and do so_?

Melane could never remember hearing such a deafening roar in her life, magnified by a Psionic echo from Tlaloc. It would be this sentiment that would create the environment for them to challenge their goal, the same as the other members of the family.

* * *

Author's Chapter Afterword:

Another chapter, another step closer to large and very bloody battles.

Not much in the way of direct action in this chapter, but you can expect that will change shortly — the appearance of new opposition guarantees that. Pay special attention to Hitomi Takamachi — she in particular is going to be a linchpin character in coming chapters, for more than one reason. Also, keep in mind that the Nazis have moved forward their own investigation work, and Eric is going to be butting heads with them just the same.

Friends come and go, enemies pile up.

In a slightly less combat note, the next chapter or two will hold some decision points that will literally affect the coming stories in their entirety — the remainder of the Multimage Chronicles and direct influence on the Jokers Wild series. Policies will be built in their infancy that will have far-reaching consequences for the remainder of the works, decisions of both small and large consequence. The implementation of these points will create legends of no small order, a mythos of belief and procedure that will shake the foundation of Existence in chapters and Sets to come. Watch and listen; you will begin understanding as early as the next chapter.

On the matter of the extraneous section above, watch and learn; the Atrebas may have been split due to the Greek Gods, but not all pantheons of divinities are aligned with the Greeks. It will be an interesting extension to the usual power plays to see which other divine groups become involved in the affairs of the Atrebas, and how those relations will affect coming events and story sections. If you're doing the reverse math here, you should expect that Diamond Atrebas is next on the stinger list — piracy is an unusual business, and you will see why coming up at the end of next chapter.

In writing terms, I have revised processes once again — a different method of handling documents has made it a lot easier to write in a mobile environment, which is ideal for my work schedule. I am still using my voice recognition systems for limited application, but for the most part I've dropped back to bog-standard keyboard — it is not as fast, but it is more readily accessible without everyone around me thinking I am insane. Writing time is still an issue, especially now that this is spring chores and home improvement season. I'm working on stuff as fast as I can, so...

Also, another point came up during the initial prep for this chapter, a request from a long-time reader for a side story pertaining to this fic. I'm not sure how fast I can turn out side-stories for the MMC, but given all my stories are set in dynamic environments a side story is an easy thing to build in terms of compatibility with the evolving milieu. If any readers have a side story / parallel story idea, feel free to send me a message and we can discuss options, and this also applies to those who have an idea and want to write it out themselves. I also take OC submissions and plot bunnies, if you feel inclined, though I may not be able to throw them in immediately.

That's all for the day.

**NEXT ****UP**: The Infantry Armor project continues apace as Eric continues applying pressure to the Nazis and IJA. With the mass of investigators in operation in Sao Paulo, things are likely to get very messy very fast for the Rebels.

* * *

Review Replies: Four reviews for the past chapter. Always good to know people are reaching out after the reading.

**Takeshi ****Yamato**: So far, Anita and Nicole have managed to stay out of the way of the old Mage. That won't last through next chapter, rest assured.

Talpa Atrebas is easily one of the most cunning among the Atrebas clan, but for all that he has the aggression down pat, the society he commands has some odd quirks that will get in his way from time to time. For reference, Diamond, Beryl, and Vala Atrebas are tied for the least aggressive of the family, though this does not make them slouches or doormats by any measure of thought.

Took me a while to get things moving again. AAA is next.

**Nim ****Maj**: Stay tuned, more Miko action to come. It may be the first real challenge Eric has received since he arrived, so...

**Etienne****Of****The****West****Wind**: Actually, the siblings are spread across seven different locations. The common reference in the Jokers Wild 'The Big Six Star Empires' should throw a clue that one of those groups got 'lost' to a degree...

The playing chicken episode definitely got Eric's heart moving at a higher pace, given Kari came within a short phrase of killing them both. Of course, that kind of brinkmanship lends itself well to learning wizardry - controlling such forces requires significant bravery, and the twins have it in spades.

**Biggie**** 1447**: You are correct, this is the very early section of the prequel to the Jokers Wild. What you are reading now is the grass roots of the genesis of the _Mjolnr_, and you can probably guess what manner of nightmares could lead to the creation of such a bizarre force as to get displaced as they...

The confusion is not unexpected. If you need clarification, I can give it in story or in PM / notes. Just ask, I am always willing to revise and extend :)

* * *

The Gripe Sheet: No gripes. As always, much thanks to my betas **Necroblade** and **Takeshi****Yamato**.

* * *

Footnotes:

(1): Russian. Roughly translates to 'fuck your mother', one of the strongest insults in said language.

(2): **Wing** is referring to the organizational structure of air force units. A Wing is roughly twenty planes for fighters, and ten for bombers in this usage.

* * *

Included Works:

**ANIME**:

—Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (Sort of): Courtesy of **Takeshi****Yamato**, the character Hitomi Takamachi is a bit of a shout-out to Nanoha Takamachi, the White Devil and main character of MGLN. That said, Hitomi lacks the mass-destruction abilities of Nanoha, though under the system of wizardry present in my fics that can be corrected simply as a matter of training. (Side note: Takeshi recommends MGLN as a good show for just about anyone. Stravag says: if you're reading this fic, you're probably very compatible with MGLN or have already seen it.)

—Yorioden Samurai Troopers (ENG: Ronin Warriors): The Infantry Armor project is based mostly on the mystic armor used by Sage of the Halo. I chose his armor form as it held the best appearance of what a technologic armor would look and act like in real-world application, and because the shoulder plates he uses would allow for hard-mounting a total s**tload of weapons or ordinance when done right.

* * *

Spell Registry:

**COMBAT ****WIZARDRY ****scope**

**Combat ****Effect**** (****Gray****) ****Spells**

—**Shadow ****Silence ****Strike**: MinDR of 65.000, planetary conditions must not be daytime or twilight to use, target must be reliant on mental processes to live. At the simplest process, this spell causes an instant-kill in targeted living beings(s) by erasing the mental processes needed to continue living. In humans, this kill method manifests by 'deleting' the core programming of the brainstem, which regulates the internal body functions such as heart rate, nervous control and breathing. Once afflicted, a person will appear to continue living for roughly three seconds, but will cease body control functions and usually simply collapse in place after they lose motor control. As this is a mental process annihilation, a _**Resurrect**_ spell or _**Raise **__**Dead**_ Transcendent Skill is only of limited effectiveness in restoring the necessary biologic material to a usable state; once used, the lack of 'programming' in the brainstem will prevent full resuscitation unless a _**Neuroparalysis **__**Rebuild**_ spell or similar skill is used on the intended resurrected being. Note that a basic _**Regen**_ spell would have no effect on this manner of death, as no physical damage is caused by the Shadow Silence Strike.

Unlike most instant-kill spells, this enchantment is effective against a group of beings in close proximity. For every 5 points of effective distortion rating above 60, a single being is slain by this spell, up to the maximum amount of beings inside the effect radius. At 65 DR, the maximum attack radius is 1 yard from the intended initial target, with every point of DR above 65 increasing the radius by a half yard. The method of determining who is slain is by determining brainstem distance from the initial target, with the kill pattern extending spherically away from the brainstem of the first target until the maximum radius is reached or maximum targets are struck down.

The Shadow Silence Strike has one grave limitation: if the initial targeted being is of a higher distortion rating than the caster, the spell has no effect on the target and does not generate a radius of kills. FULL ENCHANTMENT: "_**Whereupon the moon rises, a shadow crosses the land. In lands of starlight, the blade of a reaper reflects the eyes of eternity. The silence of darkness cloaks the truth of Existence; draw from life to give life, draw from life to take life. Shadows heed my pact; eyes of eternity, draw the mortal coil of those viewed with Shadow Silence Strike**_,"

**CIVILIAN ****WIZARDRY ****scope**

**Common ****Branch**

—**Fairy ****Glow**: MinDR of 1.5, no material component required, target must be on a planet or planetoid. When used, this spell creates five small glowing lights that hover at random distances above the ground so targeted, to a maximum of three yards altitude from the base object. Each glowing ball produces 1 candle-power per 5 DR of the spell. The area in which they appear is determined by the ground at or under where the caster is looking at the time the enchantment is completed, and will generate the fairy lights in a 1-yard radius per 3 DR of the caster. Thus, if the caster is not looking at a solid and ground-bound object when the enchantment is completed, the spell will have no effect, but if a caster looks at a skyscraper, the enchantment takes effect at the next lowest floor to where he or she is looking. The lights persist for 1 hour per 10 DR of the caster, generate no heat and cause no damage even if a person or object moves through them. Unlike most other spells, this spell can be partially affected by a **Dispel** enchantment or a cancellation relic effect generated by a lower-level caster, though the effect is in direct ratio to the difference in spellcaster's DR. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**A thousand points radiate, the hovering of light balls cover this land in Fairy Glow.**_

—**Object****Copy****: **MinDR of 8, material object to be copied must be on a planetoid, object to be copied must be touched by the caster. On application, this spell generates a molecule-for-molecule exact copy of the targeted object. For ever 1 DR of the caster's power, this spell will duplicate 1 pound of material. In the case of objects that exceed the copy power of a caster, the object is copied from the point of touch by the caster and expanding evenly outward in a shell from that point until the maximum amount of material has been duplicated. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Particles of Existence, motions of material, coalesce into an Object Copy.**_

NOTE: In the case of a powerful caster, it is possible to create a copy of a living being, however if the caster has a Distortion Rating of less than 10,000 the copy will not have any active or passive mental functions and will cease living processes within a second after being 'copied'. At values from 10,000 to 50,000 the copy will have varying states of mental debilitation comparative to the original person. Above 50,000 a copy of a person is usually 1:1 in all particulars or close enough that any mental differences are unrecognizable except to certain disciplines of Psionics. However, a copy of a living being does not retain the same Psionic, Newtype, or Distortive ratings as the original (All of the above are usually 0 or close enough to 0 as to be unmeasurable).


	11. Deployment Orders

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 11: Deployment Orders)

(26 April 2041, 2330 Hours)  
(Northwestern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Base)

Much as nights before, Anita awoke to the final shot in the dreamscape, a single round from a single pistol that ended the life of the last man standing in an entire Nazi Division. The implied horror had to be the affair that kept waking her, or the thrill of it. One of the two.

As usual, the reaction caught the attention of Nicole Whitman, the eternally-observant sniper of the pair. "Same thing?"

"No, much sooner today than prior," Anita admitted.

"Okay, this has tortured you long enough. I want to see it, and I'm not going to take no for an answer tonight. Maybe I can figure out what is happening," the sniper said.

"Okay," Anita grumped. "How do you want to do this?"

"Here;" Nicole jumped the gap between their beds over to Anita's bed. With some maneuvering, Nicole was behind the spotter and took a less-than-graceful seat. "Now, concentrate and replay the dream in your mind's eye. I can see it if I focus hard enough."

Anita settled down briefly, though she jolted again when she felt Nicole's touch on the back of her head. "Do you — "

"Yes, I do," the sniper answered curtly. "Unlike the twins, I cannot read a mind just by looking at someone."

Anita settled herself down and submitted to the touch of her cohort. After a moment of getting used to an extra mental presence (Nicole was also not subtle about being inside someone else's mind), she began to focus in on the dream.

"This is wild," Nicole gaped, watching from Anita's perspective the annihilation (literally) of a Nazi Panzer Division. The dream replay lasted several minutes, and like usual ended with the shot — though, this time both Sniper and Spotter jolted from the sheer lack of sound until that one shot. "This is...I can't put words to it."

"It is pure blue vengeance," Anita put voice to what she thought it was.

"No, that's way beyond vengeance, girl," Nicole corrected her. "That was one very pissed off wizard making a statement."

"Wait, what?" Anita spun around on the sniper and pinned her with a stare.

"You have that kind of skill?" Nicole asked in clear jest.

"No — Eric?" She asked after a second.

"Turn around and settle down for a moment." Anita did as ordered. Nicole once again placed her hands on the flats of her skull directly to the sides of her brainstem. "Focus on the last scene. Focus on his hand, since that is the only part of him you truly see."

Anita resented the severe prodding she was getting at a privacy level, but complied since Nicole would not give in until it was solved. So, she replayed the eerie silence and the incident of the gunshot, but as requested she focused as much as possible on the shooter's hand. In focus, it had a goodly amount of detail, far more than would be expected of a mere dream, but Anita was not recognizing it.

"That hand, I think I know whose it is."

"Who?"

"Come on, he should still be awake," Nicole sprang from behind Anita and took two steps before Anita jumped up herself, though not to leave the room. Given there was only one place to get a decent hold on the sniper before she opened the door to severe embarrassment, Anita grabbed the back of her bra band and hauled her back a pace with a squeal for the shock of it. "What was that for?"

"You're barely dressed, Nicole. Storm out there like that, and you know we'll never hear the end of it," the Spotter warned her.

"Oh," Nicole half-squeaked.

"Yeah, got one of those brilliant plans of yours, didn't you?" If she was famous for any one thing other than skill with a rifle, Nicole could be considered dedicated to the point of tunnel vision. It was often Anita that kept the two alive long enough to do the job.

"Well, you're supposed to back me up," Nicole whined, but at least took the reproof in good heart and threw on her workout clothes. Anita took the time to do the same, and this time followed the sniper out.

-x-

This late at night, Eric was the only person awake in the undercroft. Most everyone else was in the apartments above, asleep or shortly to be. As Eric tended to use time compression to squeeze his proper night's sleep into a matter of mere hours, he had extra time in the day to train both spellcraft and bladecraft.

His last vestige of blade practice for the night was the _bokken_ against the striking posts; he had learned from Shiori the necessary arts of katana warfare against multiple enemies, and using the neoprene striking posts as simulates allowed him to train for the inevitable recoil of blade against flesh and bone, a necessity of close combat. All manner of strikes were used: one handed, two-handed, leg chops, neck cuts, pummeling, body slashes, stabs, and blade hooks, in a randomized art that gave the enemy minimal exposure and himself maximum advantage.

It was three minutes into his battle against the rubber-coated aluminum that he passed beyond the five posts he used for the task and nearly brought the wooden sword down on the head of one of his comrades. The blade of wood came close enough to Whitman's head that it ruffled her already disorderly hair. "Wha — what gives here? You were almost struck down, young one," the old Mage said.

"Told you," Anita told the sniper.

"I didn't expect he would...erm, nevermind," Nicole brushed off her flirt with head trauma for an evening. "Can you spare a minute?"

"Indeed," the old Mage said as he uncoiled from striking form. "What ails ye two, to seek me out this late at night?"

Nicole hesitated for a few moments. "Can I see your right hand?"

"Hrm?" Eric held out his right hand, still firmly gripping the handle of the wooden sword. Of course, the handle in question was not far off the dimension of the grip around a 1911, so...

"It's...the same," Anita admitted after a few seconds of staring at his hand.

"No doubt. Same hand," Nicole confirmed.

"I take it you have seen this hand elsewhere?" Eric asked, though not unkindly.

"Yes, but...how did you get this notch?" Anita traced the length of a gouge that had been torn out of the skin on the back of his hand.

"This? It is an old injury, result of training to entrap a blade by hand. I misgauged the arc of a real blade and failed that capture. Needless to say, it ended my training for that day," Eric admitted.

"Okay, a separate question, then," Nicole asked. "Do you have control of a magic that can destroy everything it touches? A blue magic?"

Eric grimaced. "I do, it is a rare discipline called Force Magic. Why?"

"Why would that magic kill several thousand people and destroy miles of buildings and equipment, but leave Anita untouched?"

Eric frowned mightily. "I have used no such spell on these lands — nay, used no such spell in my entire career. To what manner it would imperil Anita I do not know, for I have not used one such spell in her presence of any scale. What makes you believe I have?"

"No, I don't think you have, but I think you will," Nicole said. That was enough to tip Eric off immediately:

"A premonition of events to come," Eric judged immediately. "And you say that Anita was involved, but untouched by the blue radiance?"

"I believe so. What does it mean?" Nicole asked.

"It means that Anita may be one of a select few that I have been seeking, capable to control and resist the dread destructive magic Force Wizardry," Eric admitted calmly. "This must be tested, of course, for it may be a premonition of someone else's memory."

Nicole was visibly taken aback — she had not considered the possibility that Anita's dreamscape would be of someone else.

Anita wanted an end to the affair, one way or the other. "How do I test for it?"

"First, we test your reception of the energy." Eric looped the wooden sword into his waistband in simulacrum of sheathing it. "Hold your hand up, fingers spread." Anita immediately complied. "What I am about to do will have one of two effects. Either you will absorb the charge, or it will destroy your hand. Do not fret, in the latter case I can rebuild your hand with my spells."

"Okay, do it," Anita gushed after the assurance that she would not lose the hand permanently.

"_**Magicks of the silent universe, render energy unto a point of being; the cosmic energy that creates and destroys is commanded, Force Hand Charge**_," Eric chanted briefly. After a bare second, his right hand began glowing faintly blue in the same fashion that the dream showed. "Be steady, young one."

Anita looked away and cringed, expecting pain of a severe scale should Eric's theory be wrong. After all, the screaming of the consumed was still fresh in mind, and she was voluntarily subjecting herself to the same energy. After a minute, nothing happened, she did not even feel a touch on her hand. "Anita, it's working! You're safe!"

"What?" Anita looked up to her hand, and saw her smaller hand interlaced with the old Mage's larger and roughened hand. Both hands were glowing blue.

"It is clear you are resistant, a rare trait for this skill. Roughly one in five thousand have this resistance, which is why it is so effective even in dreamscape. Now to test your ability to use, young one. Can you repeat the enchantment I just used?" Eric asked.

"I can, but —"

"So long as you hold on to my hand, you will have access to half my spell power — easily enough for this task."

Anita looked to the floor briefly, nodded twice, and then looked back up to the Mage. "_**Magicks of the silent universe, render energy unto a point of being; the cosmic energy that creates and destroys is commanded, Force Hand Charge**_," she repeated of the senior Mage's enchantment, this time focusing on her left hand. Much as she expected, it began glowing blue, but hers was more of a lighter blue than the cobalt used by Eric.

"Touch your palm to your chest," Eric commanded. After a moment's hesitation, she did so, and her mind was filled with an elation, a sense of being that well exceeded any emotional description she could have put to it. "Much as the enchantment conveys, this energy is a cosmic force that permeates all beings, all objects. When you touch it to yourself, you touch a vast ether of energy that exists in all living and nonliving materials. You are sensing Existence itself."

"What...does this mean?" Anita asked.

"It means you may best be suited to the spellbook, with such a rare set of traits as this. One in five thousand can resist the energy. Of those, one in ten thousand can command that energy."

"So, effectively, four people in Brazil will have this skill," Nicole said adroitly. "Nice. You need all four?"

"I need as many as can be humanly found and persuaded to join my rank. And every day the Nazis roam free and uninhibited may be the day they bury said wandering soul."

"I want to learn this skill," Anita declared.

"Oh, you shall learn," Eric assured her.

-x-x-x-

(1 May 2041, 1030 Hours)  
(Northwestern Commercial District, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Several weeks had elapsed since the latest Demon attack, and even this far after Hitomi could sense the raw power behind the strikes. Where attacks were happening a minimum of once a week, things had calmed down quite a bit and the soldiers were beginning to slack off in their wariness. Hitomi considered it meant that the Kitsune or Inari involved may have moved on, but she decided that unlikely. When they took a liking to a territory, they tended to remain unless they were forced to leave — and in this case, trying to force the Kitsune involved to do anything ended badly for the investigators at this site.

"Two by lightning, one by inferno," Hitomi groused, seeing the afterimages of the event in the echoes of the mental imprint caused by the major event. It gave her the ability to see what was, but much like her colleagues in the Miko, she could not identify an attacker. Whatever he or she was using did not leave an imprint of its use, only its effect. Or it was being used at such a range that a usage imprint could not be found.

"Though, they have been silent," the escort Warrant Officer noted quietly. "We should have had four more attacks since this, but only one." The infantry that had fallen dead with no discernible cause was now being lumped under the heading of 'undefined / possible demon incident' due to the sheer bizarreness of it. A squad of troops does not normally keel over dead mid-stride without good cause, and so far nobody was finding good cause — but everyone had a theory on how the Demon could have done it. Present betting was 3 to 1 in favor of the Inari in question having stolen their souls with a look at her naked body, though the dark-horse bet was on a spell that killed en masse with no trauma.

"She has been silent," Hitomi said thankfully. "More incidents would make it easier to track her movements, but necessarily leads to the inevitable result." In near-demonstration of that result, a family that was passing by stopped nearby the scene of the attack, made a sign of the cross as would a proper Catholic, and moved on in a hurried fashion. "Even the common man now knows something is unusual. We must work quickly."

"Where do we begin investigating? Begging the Priestess' pardon, but this is a big city...and we have nothing to go on."

"Maybe we do, Sakura-san," Hitomi said, looking down a side alley to an area that had also been taped off. "I believe the report on this attack said there were two separate incidents?"

"Yes, this attack, and the proficient slaying of a cell of _Los Lobos_, a street gang in the area," the Warrant recited of what she knew of the incidents. "The investigator on the number two incident said the killings were done by a real butcher of a man — someone proficient in firearms, but a definite master in blades."

"I doubt his mastery, if he needs to maintain sharpness on a street gang," Hitomi said as they walked past a bum with a case of beer.

"What would make you believe these incidents related, milady?" the army officer asked with a clear hint of curiosity.

"Too close, in both time and space, to be a coincidence." Hitomi ducked under the barrier tape and moved to the spot of one of the blood stains. "If the Inari killed and fled, she might have run into the gang. They, seeing an easy target, would move on her, and she responds with a blade." Hitomi applied her hands to the stain, once again to see the echoes of the incident.

"Okay, that is not making much sense. Would she not just teleport away, Takamichi-san?" Sakura asked the much more respected Miko, even though Hitomi did not approve of the formality.

Hitomi was silent for a minute, observing the incident thoroughly. "Not if she was on a crusade," the Shrine Maiden answered. "A girl ran back here crying, and the Inari followed in male form. Used a beer bottle as a distraction, then used what looks like a short sword or large dagger to kill one, then a long belt knife for two, and a thrown knife for a fourth. Wait, someone else, someone other than the Inari, shot and killed the last punk. One round through the back of the head. Definitely not the Inari, and definitely not Brazilian."

"Anything distinguishing?" the Warrant asked.

"No, just that he's northern European, judging by his looks," Hitomi gauged. "The Inari, I can't identify his or her features, she is wearing the cloak of a street bum. If I remember correctly from the other half of this incident, the same bum was sitting and watching. Same person, and this is probably the Inari," Hitomi judged. She did not believe in coincidences as a matter of course, given that a coincidence would not echo the celestial will as her training made clear.

"Nothing distinctive?" WO Rennei pleaded.

"Nothing, except the short sword — the more I look at it, the more I am convinced it is a sword of some kind. It is...very distinctive, what I see of it has a greenish sheen to it. What would cause steel to have a green tinge?"

"Excessive amounts of copper or aluminum in the metal, Hitomi-san?" the Warrant guessed (partially) correct.

"Hunting for bums in a town like this is no different from trying to find a single specific needle in among a pile of ten thousand. What we must look for is a transient that hides away from normal people and carries what appears to be a short sword."

"No simple task, _sempai_," Sakura answered. "Still, it is more than we know. I will pass it around at first available."

-x-

(6 May 2041, 2345 Hours)  
(Brazil Open Territory, IJA Listening post and Munitions Bunker)

"This is where we really earn our pay," Tabitha noted to the junior member next to her. "Can you do the LP and communication router from here?"

Eric cautiously looked over the dirt embankment at the surprisingly nondescript buildings. "From hence, I can crush the post, the watchtower, and the two support buildings with the engine-generator and wiring, all in a single blow," Eric said. "You shall slay the rest?"

"Oh yes. Whenever you are ready, Eric."

Eric once again peered over the dirt embankment, though this time his hand went as well. He took a few moments to carefully aim his pointed finger, as the spell he intended was very finicky about the target, and the distance was far greater than he had ever used a _**Fireball**_ spell at. After ten seconds, he was confident the attack was positioned properly, and began. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy in a massive Fireball,**_" Eric chanted from memory, as it was one of his preferred area-effect spells.

The positioning was key for the spell, because what Eric pointed at would become the centroid of a monstrous blast. The targeted norther pillar of the watch tower was struck and immediately blown out by the spell blast; within a few fractions of a second, all four other legs had suffered the same fate. The tower itself simply collapsed into the blast front, sundering it and killing the two guards on duty before they even struck the ground.

The blast wave continued radially away from the targeted leg, and the first building it came to was the actual listening post component of the camp. Barely enough to house a half-dozen men, Eric had been curious as to where the platoon-sized formation was bunking in if they did not have room in the munitions bunker or the LP. The advancing pressure wave answered that question, as the blast caved in a tunnel network under and around the LP that housed the bulk of the personnel. Most died in their sleep, but a few would survive long enough to be killed with frag grenades liberated from their own munitions stockpile.

The third target of the furious blast was the generator and cable building. Separate and insulated to muffle the sound of the horrendously loud (but necessary) generator, that extra padding would spare the engine the bulk of the damage even as it sheared the engine clear of its mounts. Another rebel cell involved in the raid would recover it and use it for their own purposes. As to the communications lines, all were disconnected abruptly and catastrophically, which also served to disconnect four other listening posts from the central hub as they were connected in series and did not have bypass or redundant cabling.

The remnant of the blast wave threw dirt clods and rocks over the lip of the embankment, though Tabitha had been smart enough to wear dust goggles for just such a happenstance. "Every time I see it, I swear you grow more powerful," Tabitha half-shouted at the Mage over the ringing in her ears.

"I may be," Eric answered as he stood up with his bow in hand and an arrow nocked. There was only one guard still standing in the area after the blast, and for Eric it was a simple 100-yard shot to drop him. Not that silence was a necessity after a tree-busting blast as he had just delivered, but Eric was not yet trained on rifles.

With the blast, the other rebels involved in the assault sprang into action, moving up onto the outpost with small trucks, vans, and other assorted transports to begin the looting phase. Eric approached with Tabitha, all amid cheers and signs of respect for _El Assistente_. To add to his credit among their ranks, he used one of his magicked broadswords to sever the locking mechanism on the munitions bunker, and cleared the way for the rifle-equipped professionals to enter and clear.

"Tabitha, Nicole, no reaction from the next post down, yet," the sniper reported as she covered the nearest enemy facility in case they made a move.

"Nicole, Tabitha, roger that," the leader responded. "It looks like we won this one."

"To bring down a juggernaut, one must strike it in small places, or the wrath comes down before you complete your task," Eric noted pensively. "When done right, there is no challenge, and there should not be. I never once fought fair, and I have no need of it today. All I want is to end their reign of terror."

"It is all we want, and all of us want it," Carlos said. "Tabitha, do you want anything?"

"As many rifles as we can fit into our vehicle, and a bunch of ammo crates. We will have need of it in the coming months."

"On it," Carlos waved over two of the armor techs to assist in the loading process.

"Is there anything you want, Eric? This is the fruit of your labor, and you should have first choice," Tabitha offered graciously.

Eric was silent for a minute, considering the choices. "If anything, just a common weapons kit. I will concern over heavier arms as I learn how to use them. I will have need of a large quantity of ammunition, however; I suspect I will take some weeks to learn the art of the rifle."

Tabitha nodded twice. "Carlos! Heads up!"

"Yo!"

"Get Eric a full set of Japanese infantry gear! And plenty of ammo for it!"

Before Carlos could begin on the task, the other rebel groups had begun assembling the gear set and handing it out to the Colombian hitman-turned-rebel. In less than a minute, a couple of loose rebels had brought over the kit to the Mage. Much to everyone's shock, they laid it as his foot with near-religious reverence. "For you, sir."

"Stand, boy," Eric ordered. This was something he had feared would happen, and did not want it clouding anyone's judgment — especially his own. "Listen well, all of you!" Activity temporarily came to a halt, as Eric's bellow was enough to carry for a distance. "I am only a soldier, duty-bound to the Fates and nothing more. I am no man of religion or reverence; do not take upon yourselves any belief thereof, for my duty is no different from yours, only is my final purpose. I will teach any man or woman who so wishes, and those who do so shall see there is nothing reverent of these skills, only an art no different from technical pursuits."

Many nodded at the rebuke and took it to heart, but some took his rejoinder as further evidence that he was a man worth following. Though his intent was to quash a fanatical following or belief in him as a supernatural authority, he had simply managed to inflame the growing reverence and fanaticism in the Rebels.

-x-x-x-

(12 May 2041, 2345 Hours)  
(Southern Sao Paulo)

"There was another bum with you on the day our agents were struck by lightning and incinerated. Do you know anything about him?"

"Not a clue," the bum said. "He passed me, grabbed a beer, and ducked around the corner where those gang-bangers were chopped up. That is all I know about him."

"A him? A man?"

"Yeah, he was a guy. Had a strange accent, not from around here. Sounded kind of like, well, yours, actually. I mean European, not Japanese or local."

"Oh," Kari answered plainly. She was afraid that the demon would have been using a German disguise, which would have hampered things. The Paranormal Division normally did not run investigations against field personnel, and having to look for an infiltrator would have nuked what credibility the Paranormals had left. Nevermind the theoretical accuracy of such a possibility, the field personnel would have gone apeshit about it as a default position.

"Dunno anything else about him. Quiet guy. No stories to tell."

"Okay, that makes some amount of sense," Kari nodded thoughtfully. "Thank you for your time. Here's ten marks, get yourself a case of beer for your troubles," she handed him a ten-note before her Master Sergeant led him out of the building. "

"We didn't learn much," her immediate CO complained.

"The likelihood that we will learn it all in one shot is close to nil," Kari said. "This is one sneaky bastard, to have done this for so long without being detected until just now."

"And with us approaching winter in this hemisphere of the globe, weather will be less than optimal for a hunt," the CO acknowledged the turn of time.

"Okay, sir, we know there is something going on here, and the Japanese consider the threat verifiable."

"I'll give it to our Pacific friends, they've developed some surprising skills for this kind of thing," the _Hauptsturmfuhrer_ (Captain) in command of the South American Paranormal troops said.

"I believe it possible their legends were at least part reality, not unexplainable fantasy as was the bulk of ours," Kari voiced her opinion on the matter. Granted, some evidence of actual mysticism had been found by the Paranormals, but most of European tradition was bunk and everyone knew it.

"Regardless, what we have here is something wildly outside of explainable norms. Let's review in the office, Teane," the Captain waved her into his highly disorganized and slapdash facility. "Okay, where do we begin?"

"Well, first off, we have a physical expectation. This is a guy of average height, average build, average features, gray eyes and brown hair. He wears a cloak, and under it has some hard-use clothing. Looks like a bum, except he has a sword."

"Yeah, a fucking Roman Gladius," the Captain whined. "I'd pay good money to have one, and this bum-witch has one. Still, to the victor goes the spoils, so I guess I'll just have to pop him — or her, whichever gender it really is supposed to be."

"Japanese counterparts believe it is female, but disguised as a male," Kari read off her little note tablet of 'estimates' on this target.

"Okay, if it is female, we pop her — and become famous overnight. Still, I'm not in it for glory, I'm in it to protect people — our people — from enemies like this. It will not be easy."

"And on that cheery note, we have the sword, the known belt knife, the assumed recovered knives, and of course the monstrous spell work. No known or assumed firearms; we have to assume that she will have some skills with firearms, but would use spellcraft for deniability or blade for close-quarters butchery."

"Well, not really plausibly deniable, given it is the only thing dropping lightning bolts on our people," The officer in charge of the Paranormals in the continent said solemnly. "And a damn bad bit of news to give to the affected families. Telling someone that their son or daughter was slain by a supernatural being that is free-roaming a whole city...not a pleasant task."

"We will catch him, sir," Kari assured him. "Our best bet is a personality match, sir. We are looking for a lady, who is very subtle and patient, but fiery or hyperactive when provoked. This is likely manifest in her off-and-on whims to attack our personnel with lightning and fire-based attacks."

"Could she be existing in female form to throw the hounds off, but use a male persona for the assault?"

"I've...never considered that, sir. It is certainly possible. I will need to confer with the Priestess that is assigned to this investigation to see what kind of time frame it would take to make that change."

The Captain leaned back in his chair, pleased with the answer she just gave on two levels. Kari was one of the brightest in the ranks of the Paranormal to not gain rank. Some said it was her immediate commander that was blackballing her, though he figured it more love of the duty than ambition for rank. _Untersturmfuhrer_ (Lower Assault Commander, or Lieutenant) Teane knew what she did not know, and knew how to ask of those who did know, which were two traits sorely lacking in a lot of the National Socialist's personnel.

"Okay, we know what we do and don't know, and we know we have resources available to find out more. Next steps?"

"I recommend we continue peripheral searching, sir," Kari said with dignitas. It lacked the glory of trying to hunt the bitch the hard way, but said enemy had already alerted the Nazis to the fact that they could be killed whenever, wherever she deemed it appropriate. "We have good, solid intel on the enemy so far. If we can firm it up even more, we can begin profiling more directly and hopefully narrow down her warren for eventual capture or slaying."

"Agreed. Double the ground personnel in the eastern and northern sectors of Sao Paulo, tell them to interview people thoroughly but do not do anything to provoke further strikes."

Neither SS Paranormal Division officer had any idea that their discussion would lay down a chain reaction of events that would ultimately lead to a vendetta far beyond their ability to contain.

-x-x-x-

(20 May 2041, 1130 Hours)  
(Northwestern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Base)

"Remember the safety lessons at all times: All guns are loaded until you know otherwise, be sure of your target, be sure of your backdrop, finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire, and always keep your firearm pointed in a safe direction. Those are the big five. Also, keep your barrel clear of obstructions, keep your weapon's mechanical components in good condition, make sure you're using the right ammo for the job, and don't rely on the safety for keeping the rest of us safe," Vladimir Pevlekov repeated the rules once again, and Eric made sure he had notes taken of them.

"Essentially, not unlike the handling rules for my bow training," Eric noted wryly after he finished writing down the safety procedures in Nordic runes. Though this lesson was a bit more condensed than his thorough archery drilling in decades (and dimensions) past, it was effectively point for point the same lesson. It was all a cold hard reality, as well, as had been demonstrated early on in his training on the bow. One of Eric's training partners had been killed by an accidental bow-shot to the side of the head; it had been no fault of the troop behind the bow, but the poor sod (Eric could not remember his name) had washed out of archery training within a week and was on the walls as a spear-carrier before Eric's 'execution'.

"Same rules apply there, and for all the same reasons. So, where do you want to begin?"

"I have an option here?" Eric asked, immediately wondering why it was his choice.

"Yeah, well, I'm not really a formal kind of trainer," Vladimir admitted with a rueful smile. "I prefer my students set the pace when we're not pressed for time. Helps 'em learn."

"We might be paced quickly, then; the Rune Maidens were hard pressed to keep me mobile with a rigid lesson plan," Eric said. "Still, best I work on this from close-range outward, as I learned the bow in years past."

"How close was 'close' for that?" the Spetsnaz trooper asked.

"We started at ten paces and worked ourselves out from there, until we were hitting man-sized targets at 500 paces with routine accuracy."

Vladimir whistled, given he had tried Eric's bow and was hard-pressed to hit anything with it beyond twenty paces (meters, effectively). After everyone tried a round with the bow and most had similar results, they were quite surprised that Eric used the same bow and arrows to stack five arrows nearly on top of each other in a row.

"Man, you guys were true hardasses, to do that with any expectation of continual success," Vladimir acknowledged. "Okay, ten paces it is. We'll probably be out to 20, 25 paces by the end of the day, so no prob."

"That much?" Eric wondered, given his first day of archery training, the targets had not been moved.

"Oh yeah, this will go a lot faster. You can fire how many shots a minute with the bow?"

"Four on charging enemies," Eric admitted. "Roughly two a minute on distant ones."

"With a pistol, you can fire four well-aimed shots in two seconds." Vladmir took a moment to make sure Eric's ear muffs were in place properly, then drew his own service pistol and demonstrated on a target at ten paces. All four rounds landed inside the bullseye, belying the training of a Spetsnaz officer. "That's all it takes."

"That is not much," Eric admitted. "And a dead person, assuredly," he concluded after the target came back to the shooting stand.

"That is years of training, and years of hard use. Now, step up to the table while I hang a new target."

Eric moved over to the range table they were using for armaments and ammunition, though since Vladimir was controlling the lesson Eric did not do anything with the gear. The instructor had put a new target on the target shuttle and used a hanging control panel to move it to where he wanted. "Your firing line is the red line. Grab up the small pistol and the magazines for it."

"Yes, instructor," Eric answered as he moved over to the red line with the required equipment.

"Load your weapon," Vladimir ordered. Eric had been thoroughly drilled on the loading of semiautomatics, and did as ordered in a reasonable amount of time. "Present your weapon to the target." Eric took aim in the general direction of the target. "Now, remember the lesson of the sights. Street thugs may say they're no good, but manufacturers put the sights on the gun for a reason. I suggest you go with the men who designed the things, after all."

Eric knew, in some really close circumstances, he would not have an option to rely on the sights, but in this case the sights were the only instrument of accuracy — as had been the shaft of his arrow in years past. "Front sight focus, center rear sight to front sight, and put combined sights over desired aimpoint."

"Correct. You may fire when ready, and fire until empty."

Eric did just as ordered. Eight rounds later, the slide of the weapon locked back on an empty magazine. "Clear, sir," Eric noted as he brought the weapon back to his body and laid the flat side of it against his sternum, trigger finger on the side of the frame opposite his chest. "Not...very impressive."

"Lethal after the sixth round, and all things considered you are not the worst student in the unit by a long shot. Even after a month of training Anita was veritably incapable of handling a scattergun with accuracy; that you put all eight rounds on the paper and the sixth as a killing blow puts you above average for the greenhorns in the unit," Vladimir Pevlekov said with clear respect. "Reload and do it again."

"Yes, sir," Eric answered immediately. He ejected the magazine as he had seen Vladimir and Carlos do more than once, and drew a spare from his pocket. The magazine went into the pistol and he brought his aimpoint back down on target in one swift motion, though it took a second to settle his sights on the target. "At the ready, sir."

"You've been learning by observing," Vladimir noted. "Speed will come with practice, but for today your goal is accuracy. You may fire when ready, and fire to empty."

Eric again went through the magazine, but did nothing fancy, simply used slow-fire technique as Vladimir wanted him to use. Any combat tricks (double-taps, Mozambique drills, speed dumps, similar) he would reserve until Eric could assuredly hit the target. And, Vladimir had to admit, he was a quick study on this subject as he was a quick learner in most other pursuits. It was something else that was hampering him, and the veteran Spetsnaz trooper figured he knew what by the way he had to hold the pistol.

"Another good string, and lethal on the fourth shot. Return that pistol to the table and draw the second pistol, the one in the middle with the holster."

"Yes, sir," Eric replied as he pulled the magazine and marched the short distance to the table. In moments, he was back on the line with the standard-frame pistol that was polymer-frame but metal slide. It used the same ammunition as the small pistol (.22LR ammo) but was considerably larger — it had been converted to .22 for inexpensive training and drilling purposes, but had several barrel and magazine kits for various common calibers.

"Load and make ready," Vladimir ordered. Eric complied in seconds, and immediately Vladimir noticed the difference when he took aim at the fresh target Vladimir had supplied. "Fire until empty, Atrebas."

The drill took a little longer because the converted medium-frame had more rounds, but the difference was stunning. A larger pistol, even with the same fixed and low-profile sights, had improved Eric from on-the-paper random results to putting every round inside the target rings. Granted, at least three of the 15 rounds would have simply pissed off a SS trooper, but at least two of them would have resulted in a dead trooper before the body hit the ground. "Completed, sir," Eric declared.

"Reload drill and make ready," Vladimir ordered curtly.

Eric did a proper reload job once more, though slowly due to inexperience. Vladimir expected it would take him time in spades to get used to handling firearms, but time was on their side — and it was a necessity in both directions, given the man learning how to use firearms was also the man teaching a rebel cell how to use wizardry.

Once the gun came to rest on the target, Vladimir knew he had the makings of someone who would be at home in Spetznaz. Without prompting, Eric had already drilled in on the threat, but held for order to commence as was proper. "Fire until empty."

Again, Eric took a decent measure of time to empty the weapon, but the results were similar to the last time. Some of the shots ranged lower than Vladimir would have preferred, but all were still technically within the 2' circle used as a target. "Completed, sir," Eric acknowledged as his pistol came back to proper retention position and Vladimir noted that the trigger finger was once again off the trigger and on the frame of the gun above the trigger.

"All right, switch out to the third pistol while I change targets."

Eric moved over to the table with the same speed as he always moved — steady and deliberate — to switch out weapons. Vladimir barely had the target switched out for a fresh one before Eric was back on the line with pistol and magazines. Once the instructor was behind the student, Vladimir began the process once more. "Load and make ready."

This time, Vladimir noted a slight improvement in Eric's load speed — the pistol he held was designed with a magazine well which would funnel the magazine into the base a lot easier than a flat-bottom design. This was a full-featured 1911A1, an American classic that was still surprisingly common on the North and South American continents, but it had a conversion kit applied to it to fire .22 ammunition. Compared to the half-polymer weapon he had just used, this pistol weighed in nearly double due to the classic steel frame and no-frills design. Switching it out to the combat-load competition 1911A1 it had been would take roughly twenty minutes, a pittance of time for training purposes.

"At the ready, Instructor."

"Fire until empty," Vladimir ordered.

Much as he had suspected, the heavier pistol improved the wizard's accuracy to full potential. Of twelve shots, all would have been damaging to a significant degree and four would have been fatal. His handling even appeared to be more at ease with the heavier full-frame weapon, likely a result of having carried swords for the bulk of his life. There was a time and a place to smaller pistols, but that time was usually after the shit hit the fan and the place was usually no more than 5 feet from a target.

"Load and make ready, Atrebas," Vladimir ordered calmly. Once again, the process was a bit faster and a bit smoother than before, probably because Eric was beginning to develop muscle memory of the task. "Fire until empty."

Twelve rounds later, Eric brought the pistol to chest. "Of them all, I would say this one suits me best, sir," the wizard noted.

"I am inclined to agree," Vladimir answered. "Not unexpected, either. Small weapons have purpose, but for someone of your stature and strength, you need mass in hand to control it to the best effect. I'll have to keep this in mind, and train you toward the heavier end of the scale."

"I look forward to it," Eric noted as he received the target of his last series. With a quick flair of the pen, he had written on it time, date, and that it was his first time behind the trigger. It would certainly be an interesting memory to the Durgan expatriate in years to come, and an interesting lesson on multiple levels.

Further drilling would have to wait, as Eric's direct apprentice Anita had walked in behind the Spetznaz and the Durgan, looking for her tardy instructor. Vladimir considered it a fortune that she was turning out to be as handy with magic as Eric was with showing to be with a gun, because Anita lacked any useful ranged-combat skills without it.

-x-x-x-

(2 June 2041, 1615 Hours)  
(Southeastern Sao Paulo, Industrial District)

Hitomi had taken the intel from the Nazis to heart: a bum, likely female, reasonably fit, and very likely to be aggressive when provoked. It was a hard set of circumstances, given that roughly a third of the bums in Sao Paulo were female and very likely to be aggressive when provoked, but reasonably fit reduced the field considerably. A bum, by definition, was not likely to be all that fit or hale in comparison even to a common man, and certainly not to the Order of Miko or the military.

Of course, having the intel in heart and and keeping an eye out were not mutually exclusive. Hitomi had captured a brigand last week by her paying attention, and he was on his way through the court system for his crimes, such as they were. Capturing the target was a simple task; all she had to do was show her sword, with a little of its intrinsic flame channeling ability, and he surrendered readily. Sakura figured it a good use of the Demon's fear factor, so...

"Where do you wish to do dinner, milady?" Sakura asked after a quick check of her watch.

Hitomi was reminded that the hunger in her was becoming annoying, for breakfast was half a day ago and only some minor munchies at a tea house half the town away had been her lunch. "What options do we have?"

"A tea house down the road, or a sushi grab-and-go a block south."

"Egh, we may have to dine local, much as I disdain such heavy foods," the shrine maiden grumped. Her last experience with a South American sushi grab-and-go was less than friendly to her digestive tract, and suffering bowel problems while on the hunt for a demon was not a wise thing to do.

"If that is the case, a soup house is two blocks south of us," Sakura remembered the lightest eating in the area that she preferred. Eating traditional foods was all well and good in her opinion, but she was in another country and determined to enjoy it. She didn't agree with suborning the entire planet's culture, but knocking their governments out was a good first step in proving Japanese superiority.

"Sounds excellen—huh?" Hitomi froze immediately, using only her peripheral vision to focus in on something that caught her attention.

"What is it, milady?"

"Silence," Hitomi ordered sharply but quietly. "Something is discordant."

"Milady?"

"Across the street, a bum next to a warehouse. Do not look directly," Hitomi said quietly. One of the things she had learned in the Shrine Maiden's operations groups is that when doing recon or tailing, you never looked directly at a target. Always look in their general direction, but never directly at them, she had learned.

"I see him, and that lady. If that is not incongruent, I'll eat my uniform blouse," the Warrant Officer noted curtly.

"She is certainly flashy, and I think I see a couple knives on her as well. This is barking like a watchdog," Hitomi gauged. As the two were watching but not actively staring, the bum stood with some grace but clear sign of age, and began following the lady down an alleyway between two warehouses. "We follow."

"Should I call for backup?" the Warrant asked.

"No, not yet. This is a suspicion, but keep your radio ready." As one, the two independent searchers moved across the street between freight haulers and crew vehicles, a mildly unsafe task in the middle of a block and without pedestrian marks on the road. They lost seconds when trying to move past a double-trailer truck, but when they came to the end of the alley they could see the bum and the girl in the distance, still moving north and away from them. "They move fast, especially for one as old as he appeared," Hitomi judged of the two.

"And the girl?" The Warrant asked.

"She definitely had knives. I can see one in the back of her belt from here," Hitomi said as she continued moving northbound in pursuit. The bum and the girl continued across the street on the next block over, headed for another alley that was slightly offset from the one the shrine maiden was in now. As they crossed the middle of the road, Hitomi could barely see the glint of metal through one of the tears in his cloak, lending credence to the possibility that this bum was armed as well. "It might be that he carries a blade as well. Be cautious."

"I am ready," Warrant Officer Rennei said stolidly. Hitomi could determine the hint of fear in voice, and understood it readily; her own heart was racing loud enough to be heard outsider her body, or so it felt. If this was the demon in the flesh, she was in for an extremely tough battle and Hitomi knew it clearly. "They're headed for the next alley?"

"Looks like it," Hitomi motioned her backup across the road between an end-loader and another cargo truck, though this time they were not delayed in crossing the other side of the street. When the two reached the mouth of the alley, it was just in time to see the two turn down a bisecting alley that headed east toward more factories. The shrine maiden picked up the pace, convinced it was a move to shake the tail.

When Hitomi rounded the corner, she found herself shocked that not only had the two not tried hiding, they were standing and facing her at a distance of ten yards. The Warrant Officer had followed so close, she rammed into the shrine maiden and nearly knocked her into a dumpster in the alley. "Oh sorr—oh, shit," the Warrant said when she realized they were tailing a rather large guy in a cloak, not something calculated to make her feel better about their intention of engaging him.

Hitomi decided the direct approach was all that was needed. "You, in the cloak, identify yourself or suffer my blade!"

The lady among the pair reached back behind herself and drew two combat knives from concealed holsters. "Big mistake following us, bitch," the scrapper said.

If anything, Hitomi was less than concerned with an arrogant twenty-something wielding a pair of knives; her katana would cut the aimless scrapper down in seconds, certainly no loss to society in these parts. It was the guy under the cloak that caused even the Miko to hesitate with his own estimation. "The Japanese officer is standard fare; deal with her as you have many others, apprentice. Be wary the lady with the sword, I sense something about her person that is not common."

"Are you the Demon?" WO Rennei asked breathlessly.

No answer was given. Before Hitomi could properly realize what was coming, the guy began the the battle by way of throwing a smaller knife at her escort. Whether or not it hit, Hitomi didn't have time to check; before she could turn her head back from the passage of the knife the demon was upon her with his own weapon — a short sword as she had seen in the visions of slayings past, a sword identified as a Roman Gladius after she drew a picture of it for the other investigators. For this initial thrust, she could only bring the sheath of her katana into the guard position necessary to avoid being skewered through the chest as the younger lady cleared past her toward the Warrant.

A gunshot snapped off from behind her, a sound that caused her to blanch badly. Who fired at who and if anyone was hit, she did not know. A telling sign of the hardness of her foe was that he did not blanch, he simply shoved through her guard and caused Hitomi to slam back-first into the dumpsters she had almost hit courtesy of the warrant officer. This time, Hitomi used the hit to her advantage; the shrine maiden sprung forward and began a draw-to-slash that was not quite iaijutsu due to the brick wall next to her. It was also slow enough that the enemy swordsman / possible demon could get his sword in place to guard against the stroke.

"Apprentice! Stay close to thine foe!" His shout was somewhat interrupted by another shot, this one came close enough to Hitomi's leg that it kicked up spall from the concrete into her calf. It was not damaging, but yet another distraction at a time she could not afford them. "Why do you engage me, priestess?" Again, she found her blade checked and pushed back against herself, but this time the 'demon' could not gain enough leverage to force her back or down.

Hitomi took an indirect response to her foe's size, using the toe of her boot as something of a pressure-point generator as she kicked into his shin. The sharp bark of pain was ample evidence that he could be harmed by mortal means, which relieved a goodly portion of her fears about the battle. If he/she could feel pain, Hitomi could kill it. "I am duty-bound to destroy demonkind!" Hitomi brought her sword around wide, an amateurish roundhouse slash that would not have passed muster in Kendo class, but might have worked against someone of lesser training. Not only did it fail to properly threaten him, she received an elbow to the face for her troubles.

"Feel free to try, young one," the demon answered. "If slaying demons gives you peace at night, let it be your life's wor — " he was stopped momentarily as a gunshot again interrupted him. The close quarters and brick walls only served to echo the sound and amplify it, making hearing anything after three shots a challenge.

"Secret Police! HALT!" Someone beyond the Demon shouted.

"No! Don't — " Hitomi's warning went unheeded as the Demon whipped around on the new interlopers. His action was two motions in one: first, a turn, second, his left arm whipped up over his body and down to level, and with it a knife was loosed into the air. Less than a full second later, one of the SS Investigators skidded to a stop on the ground, the point of a knife visible out the back of his neck and likely through the center of the spinal cord.

The shrine maiden did not miss the incredible feat of blade handling she saw in the brief moments thereafter. His right hand, still possessed of the sword, transitioned grips from normal to backhand grip and tossed it up into the air briefly. As the left hand went for the sword blade — not the handle, but the base of the blade — the right went to a holster on his hip and a pistol within. She knew it was bad form for anyone to use a pistol with one hand, but the demon got around it with bracing the pistol on the handle of the sword. What she had blanched from the sound of the Warrant Officer's pistol, she felt the blast pressure from his much larger weapon and saw the muzzle flame as each shot seemed to rattle the ground about her. At the range between the SS and the demon, there was no hope for them; before either could clear a pistol from holster, both had received a pair of rounds for their trouble.

A fifth shot rang out in series, followed by two screeches. Hitomi had saw the round nick the demon in the side of the leg, but her attention was drawn to Sakura and the sight of the scrapper having driven a knife into her side below the floating rib. Her second knife came down on Sakura's right shoulder and gouged the Warrant Officer from breast to waist at an angle, almost an evisceration had it not been a shallow attack. Hitomi took her one opening to try and defend the outclassed Warrant Officer, but this time her sword was stopped by the top of the pistol in the hand of the demon. "Damn it! Let me — " Hitomi's cry was stopped by a body check, and this time his mass was enough to drop her to the ground.

"Apprentice! This engagement is not in our favor! We are leaving!" The fairly large guy returned his sword to sheath with expert precision — it was clear in that instant, Hitomi was facing someone who knew blades better than she did.

"I've got them both, sir!" she shouted, seeing that Hitomi was on the ground and disarmed by the impact.

The pistol returned to the holster in the same fashion, and before the scrapper could continue the butchering to Rennei or start on herself, she was pulled loose and toward the downed Nazis by the master. "_**Walls among space and time be rent, distances be bridged from here to base rune with a Gate**_!" the Demon chanted with his left hand to open air. In less than a second, the view in the area shifted from a daylight alley to a dark room with a nightlight and what appeared to be a bookcase on the wall. Without any form of pretense, the demon simply picked the apprentice up by the back of her shirt and belt, struggling through it all, and heaved her through the portal. He followed a pace behind.

"Wait!" Hitomi instinctively reached for the gate several meters distant, but it closed behind him when he uttered a command in an unrecognizable language.

"Priestess Takamichi! What happened here?" A Japanese Lieutenant asked as his men flooded the alleyway.

"It was the demon," Hitomi said as she clamored to her feet. "The demon...and an apprentice. And he is capable of learning — terrible things," she said as she braced against the dumpster.

"Did you — you did battle against the demon?" The Lieutenant asked incredulously. "Why didn't you call for backup?"

"I didn't think — I couldn't expect — "

"Enough, _Shōi_, allow her to rest," a different officer ordered. This one, a Major by his collar tabs, bent down to claim her katana. "Your blade, priestess," he returned the sword to her in proper fashion.

"Major, see to her first. I will be all right," Hitomi waved to the downed Warrant Officer, who was already being seen to by a pair of the infantrymen.

"Rest, Priestess. You fought hard, and lived to talk about it. We can worry about the details in a minute."

For her part, the adrenaline would not let go of her. Hitomi felt that the battle should still be going on, but it had ended abruptly when the Demon simply opened a hole in Existence, threw his apprentice through it, and closed it behind himself. Where he went, what he was planning next, she did not know. And not knowing was already half the battle lost.

-x-x-x-

(11 June 2041, 2000 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Bunker)

Eric had needed to nurse the gunshot wound he took to the leg, though in all reality it was minor. A quick healing spell once he and Anita were safe, and that problem was solved. Anita had escaped injury in the battle, a fact calculated to make Eric happy. She would need more — and more intense — training on blade combat, given she should have made short work of the Warrant Officer, but that Anita survived unscathed was cause for celebration in this case.

"On the other hand, someone lived to tell your tale," Carlos said sympathetically.

"Someone, yes, and she called herself a specialist in dealing with demons, which means she was brought in specially to hunt me," Eric muttered in a soured tone. That he had been unable to put down a lethal blow on her was testament to her skill with the blade — a problem he was not expecting but one he figured possible. That he was being engaged by specialists in the art of hunting demons was something he considered an honor — if they were willing to throw personnel of that caliber at him, Eric figured he was doing something very right.

"Look, man, normally when someone gets burned like you did, we relocate them to a cell in a different part of the continent, but in this case we can't do that. You're way too important to the team to cut loose," Tabitha admitted candidly. "You've given us a lot, and we've made a move that you probably won't approve of, but we feel if anyone can do this, it is you."

Phrased like that, Eric knew something major was in play. "You are referring to something elliptically. Might I ask what?" he said as he followed the cell commander downstairs to the machining floor.

"Oh, it is a variation on your existing skillset," Tabitha replied pensively.

"Now you have my attention," Eric said. Shortly did he follow the two into the room where the infantry armor sets were cubicled for storage and maintenance. He was down here frequently, aiding the other troops into or out of their armor and studying the process of using it, though he figured himself appropriately last for an armor set. With his offensive and defensive skillset, it was not needed — at least not immediately..

"And this is why we are reluctant to move you out to safer territories." Tabitha had stopped in front of a new set of armor, this one still in primer paint and lacking any scratches from movement wear.

Eric looked above the armor set to the name on the wall, and was a bit shocked to see that his apprentice had hand-painted his name on the wall in Norse runes. "This is...a significant honor," Eric said in shock. "I was never expecting to serve on this line, milady."

"It is your line, and it will be needed in due time, Eric," Tabitha noted. "If we expect to defeat the Nazis in our lifetime, this is a required step. All of us will need time on the battlefield."

Eric thought back to the battle in weeks past and what he had sensed during it. To a trained combat mage, it was obvious the lady with the katana had some manner of quasi-spellcraft skill and her sword had an unusual radiance about it just the same. She had not used either in the battle, but Eric knew a threat when he was close enough to it.

"If I may, milady, a thought comes to mind," Eric began, but hesitated.

"What is it?" Tabitha responded.

"I do believe I told you that I sensed something about the enemy I faced?" Eric prompted for confirmation.

"You did." Tabitha had not been pleased at all to hear some of her foes had a skill similar to Eric's, even if it had not been directly observed.

"I would like to use this armor as an experiment, in the use of magicks on a technological device as confirmation that it can be done without harm to the technology portion of it," Eric noted.

"Go on," Tabitha prompted.

"I will put enchantments on it to defend against fire, against other magic weapons, and to reduce the weight of the armor. Additionally, I think I can make the armor regenerate damage to the user as it is worn. Would you approve, on the possibility that while I think it shall be safe, this runs a possibility of damaging the technology aspects?"

Tabitha was not, by nature, a trusting soul. On the other hand, she did accept Eric's judgment on wizard matters as well beyond hers, and she figured if he thought it was safe, it likely would be. The other case, it ruined the technology components, well, no big deal. They were designed to be replaced in the field, since there was no assumption whatsoever that a suit of this armor would be undamaged for the life of the war. Replacing them would be a task of a couple hours for a competent technician, no big loss when wagered against the possibility that Eric could make the armor extremely damage-resistant.

"You may commence. What support do you need from us to make it happen?" Tabitha cleared the wizard to process his experiment.

"I will need food, water, and a chamber pot. I intend to use time compression to speed up the process. I estimate I can complete the enchantments in a week's unaltered time if I can get a 3-to-1 compression active."

"We can get you a porta-potty and all the food or water you need for the task," Carlos opined. "All that shit in a week's time? You're insane, man."

"It is not merely a week, or, more appropriately, it is three weeks compressed into one," Eric clarified for the Colombian hitman. "Where you will know only seven days of day-to-day affairs, I will experience twenty-one days and so will the armor. I will appear to be asleep every five hours or so, and this shall be normal and expected, given that when I do crash, I will already have cleared sixteen hours of spellcraft work."

"I still say insane, _amigo_," Carlos grumped. "But hot damn if it works."

"If it works, I can use the right correlation of spellcraft effects to give the armor sets immunity to common weapons, near-immunity to magic weapons, and healing powers for the troops inside. There will be other skills we can use, but I can amend a relic's powers at a later time." Eric started into the faceplate of his armor, considering what other spells he could imbue into the system for his benefit. He figured a channeler skill would be in order, to enhance his wizardry and allow it to work through his armor instead of being impeded by it. Lightning resistance would be a handy skill, given the propensity of electricity to damage the systems (or so a technician had explained). There would be more, but as he figured there would be time to use them at a later time.

"I'm looking forward to it," Tabitha said with cheer to voice. "Now, what colors do you want yours painted?"

That question gave Eric pause, but not for long. "Oh, simple. Slate-gray exterior, cobalt-blue trim," Eric recited the name that Anita had put to the color of his force wizardry, "And I shall stencil out my shield device for the technicians to paint on once the base coat is done." Eric intended to revive the symbol of Durgan in these lands, the classic shield device of three triangles, one stacked on the apex of two others, akin to the inverted wedge symbol favored of the Spartans but meaning something far different from their shield device. "Can the paint technician apply the same symbol to the shoulders plates as well?"

"Should be able to," Carlos answered. "I had work done on my shoulders as well."

"Then it shall be there as well. A lesson shall be taught to the Imperial Japanese and Nazis in symbology, in due course, and they as nations before will learn to fear a Durgan Bladesman."

-x-x-x-

(20 June 2041, 0630 Hours)  
(Greenland Sea, north of Iceland)  
(Assault Ship _Heinrich Himmler_)

"Admiral Dorlitz, awaiting your approval to commence," the operations officer requested.

At least for show in an exercise situation, the Admiral had to make it look like he was weighing options. Not that something like this would have been pre-planned to begin with, but the decision to jump off or standby was always the province of the fleet Admiral. Unforeseen circumstances could arise at any time, and a proper commander would have to weigh them before operations commenced.

"The order is approved. Begin the assault," the Admiral answered.

The Operations Officer, in this case _Oberst_ (Colonel) Nick Hayward, turned back to his radio console and pressed a button. "Landing operations are authorized. All forces begin Operation Triton Thunder at 0630 hours."

"An interesting name," the Admiral said as he looked over the Colonel's shoulder at the command console for the forces.

"Not my idea, Admiral, but a fitting one," the Colonel noted. He was not SS, by dint of not being cut out for the SS's more metrosexual units, though not for want of trying. The British-born 'Kriegsmarine Sturmtruppen' as he was often called by his peers should have made the cut for a real SS posting, but something about the way the Brits had resisted during the first phase of the war still left undue rancor in the upper echelons of SS command, even a century after the fact. So, barred that path to advancement in the Wehrmacht, the Limey had taken the hardest non-SS path possible: Naval Assault Infantry.

"So, this is where it comes together," _Oberfuhrer_ Johann Tritz noted as he kibitzed a different command console. "I see now why you wanted my participation from the frozen butthole of Europe," he groused, still severely rankled by his own past. He was SS, unlike the Assault Trooper next to him, but because he had outed a homosexual officer three ranks above him, and that officer was tied to someone who had the ear of the _Fuhrer_ herself, he had been posted to a fighter regiment in Greenland. The only way he would ever see action again was if he took his fighter out of the hangar, had it de-iced thoroughly, and went in search of a polar bear to bomb or strafe. At least, that was how his career went until the very-unconventional Assault Troop Colonel had called upon a very disgraced SS Fighter Senior Colonel to provide air support in coming campaigns.

"Air Support has to be there," the Admiral said. "No assault landing can hope to retain a foothold in the face of opposition without someone above to thin the enemy ranks."

"And I intend to be there for the landings in Soviet lands. Damn good thing that Japanese Demon started out in South America and not up here, eh?"

_Oberst_ Hayward chuckled grimly. "I feel sorry for that poor sod Stauffenburg, having to fight something that is unseen, unheard, unstoppable, and thoroughly merciless as that thing."

"Well, one of the Japanese Temple Priestesses who is a specialist in slaying demons was able to fight him straight-up in close quarters," the Admiral noted, having heard so from a SS Paranormal Division Colonel last week. "The battle was inconclusive, technically, but the real frightening news from that engagement was that the Demon now has at least one apprentice."

"Oh shit," _Oberst_ Hayward groused. "Just what we need, more of the bastards."

"That's about the size of it," Senior Colonel Tritz echoed the thoughts of the other two officers. "On the other hand, if this Demon roams free and we can get a bead on it, a couple thousand pounds of bomb should ruin its day in a hurry."

"I like the way you think today," Nick noted wryly. "Okay, here's where your fly-boys give them a good slap in the face," and on the command consoles around the room, the first wave of strike fighters had passed over the landing beaches in Iceland. "The trick here is knocking out enough of the 'Soviet' shore defenses that landing does not cost me most of my regiment for 300 meters of shoreline."

"And that will be a trick like no other," Tritz noted gravely. For practice purposes, this shore emplacement had double the defenses and slightly more than double the AAA forces in place, simply to make the training harder on the invading forces. For sure, the real deal would be hard enough, but training to an apeshit standard of conduct could make the real thing flow smoother.

"My left nut for some of that standing armor they're rolling out now," the Admiral joked.

"No dice, sir," the Kriegsmarine Trooper said sadly. "Looks damn good on paper, but clearly doesn't play well in water. Helicopters are far more useful in the forced landing phase, though given the Icelandic terrain, the Standing Armor would do better than the classic tanks would on the island."

"And all of the prototypes are going to the Eastern Front, to combat the Soviet's hordes upon hordes of tanks," the _Kriegsmarine Sturmtruppen_ completed the thought. "Hell, this whole landing thing is probably administrative, just a distraction for the Soviets. I'll wager fifty marks that the last great campaign is decided in the snowfields west of Leningrad."

"I shall not bet against you, my friend," the SS officer agreed. "Still, we can at least show the land-bound temperate-weather pussies how to do a forced landing right. Maybe we'll get some attention then, eh?"

"Well, we're all stuck in dead-end careers, from the infantry all the way to the Admiral, so we'll either go out in a blaze of glory or we'll do something right and maybe get some traction again." Colonel Hayward folded his arms across his chest and leaned back slightly. "Now, second wave air, with helicopter support for hardened targets."

"If we saturate them with airpower, they can't keep us on the beach for long," the Admiral noted wryly. "Of course, in the real thing we will also have ship-to-shore bombardment going for us, and I have some twenty-inch guns that could use some flexing."

"Happy to have that support along for the ride, sir." Strangely enough, it was the SS officer that had said so. His was predicated on the thought that the shelling would begin before his air power would start their runs, and hopefully the shore bombardment would scratch some of the ADA (1) before he even got to the theater.

"Shore landing commencing now, with inland assault helicopter landings. Looks like we have the general concept down," the Colonel noted with a clear air of satisfaction. "Now to use it on the great Soviet Bear. Come to think of it, while I'm in Mother Russia, I think I need to find me a bear and get a good bear-skin rug for home."

"If you happen across two bears, I am sure the stateroom here could stand to have a rug just the same," the Admiral thought aloud.

It would be the last bit of brevity for the rest of the simulation, and one of the few points of brevity in the coming months. Factors outside their purview threatened to make their jobs complicated beyond the scope of their pay-grades, and not for any measure of good reason.

-x-x-x-

(1 July 2041, 0500 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Bunker)

"There is only one way we shall know for sure if this works as I intend, milady," Eric noted to Tabitha, though his response to her refusal lacked the emotion that his commander was showing over the matter.

"Eric, I am not, under any circumstances, NOT shooting a Panzerfaust at you. Not happening. I will not throw grenades at you, I will not plant a satchel charge in front of your shield, I will not set up a landmine for you to trigger, not happening."

"We have tested all of the above against the shield component, and it resisted all damage," Eric reminded her. "To be prepared for strikes in combat, I must at least take a hit in practice to know what I shall be facing," the elder Mage said, though this time with a little more force. "I understand the hazard involved. Though, much as I told the Captain-General of the Durgan Military many years ago, All of life is a gamble and if I fail, let it be lesson to never try this again."

"He has a point," Carlos agreed with the Mage. "And, all things considered, we are all dying to see how well it stacks up in real battle circumstances."

"I will take the shot," Vladimir volunteered. "Though, rather than using the Panzerfaust, I will use something that is easier to aim and more accurate, such as the Panzerschreck," he continued stolidly.

"And a lot more powerful, to boot," Tabitha said in clear disapproval. "All right, if you are so dead-set on getting shot, Atrebas, I might as well let it happen. But, you will do it with the Panzerschreck only, the 42mm Grenade Launcher, and hand grenades only. I'll have the techs start up the ventilation system so we don't asphyxiate ourselves with explosive fumes." Four stories under an apartment building, there would be little or no chance of being heard topside. The bunker had been designed with this intention in mind, so structurally they were at little hazard of causing problems without using much larger explosives.

"I do not relish the experience of facing down an anti-tank rocket, milady," Eric answered calmly. "I never relish the necessity of exposing myself to combat, but I know when I must train harder than battle to achieve the necessary results in that battle."

"Some consolation prize that is," Tabitha grumped. "All right, Twins, you've wanted to do some grenade work, get some 'nades and get ready for it." Sandbags had been set up overnight for just such a task, and everyone was hunkered down behind them because of the possibility of fragments. It was also telling that everyone not in their own set of armor was wearing ballistic armor capable of stopping fragmentation, and if Eric survived the fragging himself he could provide medical service to anyone that needed it.

"Yes ma'am!" Kari answered for herself and her sibling before they ran off toward the armory.

"I am really not going to like this," Carlos whined. "I mean, it's the Mage, y'know? You don't shoot an ally, and furthermore, you really don't shoot an ally that is capable of fragging you down to bloody scraps with just the power of his mind, y'know?"

"He asked for it," Vladimir took the cynical view of the matter before he slipped on the best hearing protection he had. "When you look at it right, though, we have already done this test. The only thing outstanding is doing it with the crazy bastard actually in the armor."

"We're ready!" Each of the twins had four grenades apiece, which didn't surprise Tabitha in the slightest. They **really** wanted to throw some grenades, and now was as good a time as any in their opinion.

"Eric, are you ready?" Tabitha asked of the Armored Infantryman.

"For what it is worth, I am ready," the Durgan Bladesman answered evenly.

"Take positions, people! Helmets, ears, and safety glasses!" Four sandbag bunkers had been set up in the room for as many people as possible to see the 'engagement' live and in person. It would also give Eric a minor test to have to defend against being engaged from two directions at once, and he had a standard paintball gun to return fire on those who were harassing him.

"Panzerschreck, ready to fire," Vladimir Pevlekov noted.

"God help the crazy mother-fucker in that armor," Marcos Rigos said reverently, the first thing he had said in the argument at hand.

"I am readied," Eric deliberately hunkered down and slightly angled his shield so the impact would drive it down into the ground.

"God forgive me for this," Tabitha said. "Vladimir, fire."

Tabitha could not remember the actual shot, but she did remember clearly the very brief flash of the explosion. She also remembered seeing the shield buck somewhat as it bounced off the ground, and as most of the inertia from the blast tried driving the Armored Infantryman backward and away from the point of impact. It did not last long, though, and he was back to standing normally.

Much as in the test prior, there was no actual metal damage to the shield. To prove the point, even, Eric had pulled a window-washer's squeegee and used it to clean off the powder fouling from the blast on the outside of the shield. "Arrogant asshole," Vladimir said with a chuckle.

"Dude, not only did we not damage the shield, the enchantment he put on it even protects the freaking paint on it!" As if to demonstrate Carlos' point, Eric used a small water bottle to wet the last of the fouling and squeegee it off the shield.

"Now, who is next?" Eric asked the assembled persons.

"I have it," Carlos said quietly. Before Eric could react and brace or put the shield in place, Carlos had raised up and popped off a 42mm grenade at him. Much as expected, Carlos had no trouble hitting the Armored Infantryman at a paltry 50 meters of range, though after the brief smoke cloud cleared, his shot appeared to have knocked down the target.

"Damnit, Carlos, if that killed him, I am going to shove that grenade launcher up your ass and — " the remainder of her threat went unstated as Eric began the process of bracing and standing.

"Now that was a true shit-in-your-pants experience," Eric admitted wryly over the intercom. "Good shot, by the way. Center chest." A quick cleaning with a rag proved that the enchantments on the armor even protected his chest to the same degree as the shield was protected. "Now, may I request an all-hands effort?"

"Damn, we've created a monster that even we cannot kill," Marcos Rigos noted with clear humor to voice.

"Well, all we can do now is turn him loose on the Nazis and wait for the fireworks," Tabitha said with clear relief in her voice. If Carlos could not kill him with a snap-shot of a grenade launcher, he was safe from anything short of a tank cannon — and maybe even from that?

Eric approached to twenty-five meters, easily close enough to have hand grenades thrown at him. "Ready for the multitude of hammerings," the Mage said.

Eric considered that it was an eerie feeling, seeing grenade after grenade thrown in his general direction, and that this would be certain doom were he not wearing the armor he was clad in now. The blasts happened at staggered intervals, with four persons throwing grenades in counter to his presence they were not all evenly timed. Even still, a grenade is a paltry thing, designed to fragment and not really to push objects around. His shield stopped the brunt of the assault, and Eric took a knee to brace properly and prevent an errant series of explosions from knocking him to the ground.

After a minute, the assault was done. Eric stood to look around his shield and verify nobody was planning another attack, and decided a demonstration was in order. "My turn," he said over the intercom system.

"Oh shit," someone replied, though Eric had begun his shield charge and could not recognize who said it. Partway to the first bunker, Eric reached in behind the shield and drew Shiori's violet katana, intent to use his best blade as demonstration of the sheer fear factor a Durgan Bladesman was trained to instill into their foes. He had no intention of harming anyone, but chopping up the Panzerschreck would be a good lesson — and he wanted to confirm he could still scare the enemy shitless.

-x-x-x-

(3 July 2041, 1400 Hours)  
(Japanese Special Warfare Base, Manaus, Brazil)

"Attention to orders!" the Base Commander shouted to the few subordinates that would be involved in this issue. "The threat in Sao Paulo is considered verifiable. It is real, and so is the orders to deal with it as is appropriate. You men will be the reaper of this demon, and we will have our first viable specimen to study for weaknesses."

"_Hai!_" the six officers in question shouted.

"This is classified, necessarily. If you have friends or family in Sao Paulo, have them quietly get out of town. As soon as we have a fix on his position, we will begin deployment. We will not saturate the target area immediately, but if the first wave fails to kill, we will employ second, third, and fourth attacks as needed."

"And if saturation does not work, sir?" one of the weapons technicians asked.

"The Nazis have already offered a solution." His pronouncement could mean only one thing, and that was the one step beyond their intended weapon.

"Well, let's make sure we do it right so we don't have to nuke the whole city," the senior technician said. His was predicated on the thought that what they intended to do would cause a couple hundred thousand casualties at the most; what the Nazis intended would cause a couple million casualties at the minimum.

"And that is the purpose in your madness," the base CO declared. "Each team has two canisters to prepare. I want them done before sundown, or I want to know why."

"_Hai_!" there was no running in the chemical lab, though each team broke rank and marched toward their stations at a brisk marching pace.

The task was simple in plan: assemble and prepare six Gas Distribution Canisters, load them with the necessary precursor chemicals for the desired weapon, and seal them for transport. Each team knew they would also be called upon to emplace and activate the canisters, a task that could be heart-wrenching in duty but necessary just the same. The senior technician had been ordered to set a Canister in the middle of a residential area in years past, a known hive of rebel forces. Children were riding bikes nearby where he dropped the canister, and his mission was paramount.

The results spoke for themselves: one canister, no more rebel activity in Nicaragua. It was a paltry 35,000 casualties to pay for the lives of the Imperial Japanese servicemen. On the other hand, Sao Paulo had a far lower density of children than the capital of Nicaragua had, so casualties among minors would be lessened.

"I hate the thought of using these things," the junior tech noted to the senior tech on the Number 2 team.

"No moral man looks forward to using something as indiscriminate as this," the Senior Tech noted as he held the trapezoidal base plate of the device against the bottom of the reaction chamber. A trio of rubber gaskets were already in place to triple-seal the chamber, which would give a mean failure rate of 1 in 85,000 — far greater than the amount of canisters that would ever be produced for the Imperial Japanese Army. In point of fact, this was Canister Kit number 323, and the next canister would be 324. Once the base of the canister was screwed in place and torqued down to 125 kilos pressure, it was forever considered an expended kit — even if the weapon was disarmed, it would not be recycled. The kit would be slagged down under a thermite pile as a safety precaution.

"And, this is no normal enemy we face, so extraordinary measures are needed," the junior tech conceded as he placed the rubber gaskets for the cylinder head. Again, another three gaskets went into place and they were followed by the cylinder cap. Much as the base plate, the top cylinder was torqued down to 125 kilograms of pressure to prevent any leakage of the chemical before deployment.

"I would relish a look at the Demon, but I know better," the Senior Tech noted as he screwed a secondary tank onto a fitting on top of the cylinder. This tank also contained a special dump mechanism that would combine the precursor chemicals to mix and begin nebulization of the gas weapon. "Set the timer for testing," the senior tech ordered.

"Thirty seconds, set," the junior tech noted. After the time elapsed, the small tank opened a dump valve into the body of the main reaction tank, which is what they wanted. The timer would be set longer than thirty seconds, allowing the technicians enough time to set the system, unhook the trailer they would be using, and drive off before the chemicals mixed into a lethal weapon.

"Count gaskets packs," the senior technician ordered. There was no such thing as enough safety for this detail.

"Two gasket packs, no rings remaining," the junior tech answered after a quick inspection.

"We begin on the second cylinder. Time waits for no man."

"_Hai_, _sensei_," the junior tech answered.

It would be a long and hazardous day for all three teams, but in the end they would all achieve their objectives. With a simple day's work, six men had consigned millions to death.

-x-x-x-

(7 July 2041, 1530 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Bunker)

Much as was normal for the Durgan Bladesman, he spent at least most of his afternoon in the physical training room, working on his own close-combat skills and recently improving Anita's bladecraft. She was decent behind a pair of knives, but if she could not present a challenge to Eric then she had much to learn on the subject.

Of course, his predictability lent itself to tracking him down whenever needed.

"Eric, you — there you are," Tabitha said curtly. The old Mage knew she could get excited from time to time, but to be flustered beyond compare — much less to worry about the Mage — was beyond normal conduct for her.

The grim expression on Vladimir's face gave further explanation on the matter. "Something is wrong, I daresay?" Eric asked.

"Yes, we have to get you out of here — now. You are compromised, and the IJA has prepared special weapons to use on you," Tabitha said in a rush. "How quickly can you pack?"

"Hold," Eric said, holding up a hand in request for everyone to slow down. "If these weapons-bearers are mortal men, I can defeat them without issue. Why should we panic in the face of an enemy that is only now improving their arsenal?"

"No, you misunderstand, Eric. These aren't men, these are _special_ weapons, chemical weapons. There are no men involved."

"I do not understand," Eric replied warily. "Even the great Panzers require men to operate, and men can be silenced within. How can a special weapon be of any use without a hand to control it?"

"Eric, it is gas, poison gas," Tabitha said. "We can't be screwing around here, we have to get you packed and on a transport — "

"Poisons? Gases?" Eric asked, incredulous. "I am conversant in these weapons, and as it happens, already defended against them," Eric said with a smile. "Remember, milady Tabitha, I am the resident master of magicks, but even I am disciple to higher powers. As I was commissioned by the Fates, understand that they would have clear knowledge of the future ahead of me, and they would certainly prepare their instrument against easy defeat with a poison gas."

A silent gap of thirty seconds ensued. "Okay, I do not understand, now," Tabitha responded. "I know magic is powerful stuff, but how can you expect to survive a chemical weapon attack?"

Eric held up his right hand, upon which rested more than one ring. "A relic device can be imbued with power capable of resisting poisons. Why do you think alcohol has no effect upon me? Alcohol is a form of poison in quantity, and my relics resist it. I can be chewed on by a cobra and suffer nothing more than a bleeding bite mark for its trouble."

"Yeah, and after a few days of agonizing pain, the cobra dies," Vladimir snarked. "Okay, you can defend yourself with this ring. Can you make enough for all of us?"

"A good question. I will research immediately." Eric raised his hand in the general direction of his apartment, on the same floor as the training room. "_**Recall Tome of Relic Enchantment**_," Eric ordered, since the book was not in his library but on the work table in his room. Once the spell took effect, the heavy book in question appeared in front of Eric's outstretched hand; it was Tabitha that reacted fast enough to catch it.

"Sorry," she said as she handed off the massive book to its rightful owner.

"No apology needed," Eric mumbled as he bent to the tome. "Okay, this is the pair of enchantments I require. A gaseous resistance, and a poison resistance. Separate spell sets, and each is a twelve-hour component, but this is easily completed."

"How much else will you need?" Vladimir asked, now intrigued that the wizard thought it could be easily done.

"Just rings." He bent to the text further for a moment. "Ah, an interesting thought. This is a fairly high-level skillset they are borne from, so I can do a maximum of four rings at a time without lessening the effects of the spell."

"Four rings, and how long for the total ring?" Tabitha asked warily.

"I will naturally add a regeneration skillset to it, to prevent or repair physical damage from these poisons. Total, 88 hours per set of rings, including the preparation and sealing of the devices."

"Six days per set." Vladimir's math was predicated on a 16-hour workday, which was not an impossible task as Eric had proved when building the protections on his armor. "Assuming we do the whole unit, a little over two months," Vladimir noted.

"Of course we do the whole unit, but..." Tabitha looked to Eric, who simply smiled.

"Oh yes, you have not accounted for time compression," Eric completed his commander's thought. "Under three-to-one compression, much as I used for my armor, I can outfit the whole unit in less than three weeks, and have a surplus before a fourth week."

"This is exemplary," Tabitha said. "Are you willing to do it?"

Eric looked down to the text of the spell, and nodded twice. "Have new rings fitted to everyone on the staff, and I shall begin preparing them four at a time. This shall include me as well, as I want a second ring set for extra guard purposes."

"Can do. Does the material matter?"

Eric shook his head. "Theoretically, I could apply the enchantment to anything, but for something of this nature a ring is optimal."

"Understood." Tabitha looked around the room. "Reginald! Front and center!" she shouted to one of the fabricators who was on break and taking liberties with a punching bag.

"Yes, ma'am," said technician acknowledged as he came to attention.

"Eric has a high-priority project, and you need to provide the material. Pull a 2-inch aluminum rod, cut it down to quarter-inch blanks, and fashion each blank into a fitted ring for every person in the unit, including Eric. He will take these rings and enchant them so we are resistant to chemical weapons. Do you understand the gravity of this issue?"

"Yes, ma'am, I'm on it," Reginald saluted quickly and was out the door at significant speed.

"Always defense," Eric noted coldly as the three senior officers watched the technician leave.

"Huh?" Tabitha prompted the older Wizard.

"Always defense, Tabitha. If you run, you only die tired. If you fight with wild antics and flailing about, someone will laugh at you before they cut you down. Always defense, for speed is not armor. Armor is armor, and speed is an illusion."

Tabitha opened her mouth to respond, then wisely snapped it shut. She was not about to argue offense versus defense to a man who made his living by way of breaking the rules.

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence...)

Diamond Atrebas was vanguarded into the tavern by his best rigging men, burly men who threw lines and hoisted rigs with a smile to their faces, and who made it a point that Diamond would not enter a hazardous situation without a bodyguard. Port-Au-Spain was a common calling for his ship, and Diamond had a special arrangement with this barkeep for his crew, but there was always the possibility of hazard wherever he went. The Spanish Inquisition (or, for that matter, the Roman Catholic Inquisition) may have been engineered initially to ferret out Jews and undesirables, but they would certainly do their stated purpose of stomping out witchcraft should they capture Diamond.

"Ah! The crew of the _Mystic_! Well Come!" the barkeep shouts. "I heard you put a French Frigate down a fortnight ago, over by Bermuda. Congratulations, Black Diamond Atrebas!"

"Hear Hear!" Someone at one of the tables shouted with a raised tankard. "Three Cheers for Black Diamond!"

"Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!" A large portion of the crowd answered. Port-Au-Spain was presently English territory, though in all reality the town was far more loyal to 'Black' Diamond Atrebas than they were to the English asshat presently running the Governorship into the ground. As to the French and Spanish, well, nobody in town would sweat it if their shipping suddenly found itself six leagues under the sea...

"Thank you, thank you, ladies and gentlemen," Diamond said with the utmost dignitas he could muster. "This one goes to the people of Bermuda, however; I only sunk the French Frigate because they were firing on a civilian settlement. Let not your hearts mourn for those scoundrels; a few sharks dined well on the damned souls of that dishonored ship."

A belly laugh arose from some of the more grizzled occupants in the room, though most simply clapped their appreciation of Diamond's latest not-so-pirate act of piracy. As the 'new world' became more strategically important to the Europeans, the island nations became rife with old-world conflicts and the necessary naval shipping to support them. Diamond had inadvertently coined the term 'Euro-trash' to describe European aristocracy trying to 'swing their dicks around in the colonies' as his First Mate described their policies. It had not taken Black Diamond more than six months to start hearing that name bandied about in the seedier parts of other cities in the Caribbean, and not a full year before it was commonplace.

"First round is on me, Diamond, for that kind of a victory," the Barkeep said as Diamond took his customary black stool at the bar. "Damn good of you to sink that ship. 'Twas the same that sent my beloved to the depths, along with all hands."

"My condolences, my friend," Diamond accepted the tankard of ale — his first of what promised to be a long night — and saluted the barkeep. "I consider it an honor to have avenged the fallen, on both land and sea it would appear."

"You, Black Diamond, are in the wrong job," the Barkeep said ruefully while he drew tankards for his bodyguards. "The way you turn hearts, motivate men, you should be a hero to these islands, not a simple pirate."

"There is nothing simple about my piracy," Diamond said. "I am establishing a capital base from which I can begin preparing more ships and crews. The Europeans have extorted the wealth of these lands for too long; I intend to take my fleets to them and start soaking their riches from the belly of the beast, and return it to these lands!"

The slamming of his tankard coincided with the slamming of the door to the tavern. Immediately, all eyes were on the newest entrant, a swarthy figure with a fanciful coat and a massive cutlass to accompany. This imposing edifice of naval grandeur made it only two steps into the tavern before he stopped dead, staring at the bar. "Oh, shit."

"Ah, the great Marquis Rico Muigel," Diamond said curtly as he stood. "A finer example of the Euro-trash that infests these islands, one shall never see!"

"What your tongue, knave," the Marquis said with more gusto. "When Spain sends her mighty armies — "

"—Yes, yes, when Spain sends her mighty armies, I will be forced to run or die like a pirate dog. Been there, heard that, still not impressed," Diamond completed the Marquis' declaration in a very bored fashion. "Six years, Marquis, six years I have heard that same tired flatulence from you, and not one whit of Spanish Inquisition and hellfire that you keep promising. All I see of Spain is your sorry profile every other campaign I undertake, and quite frankly I am getting tired of beating your ass every time we meet. I've shot what, no less than seven warships out from under you since I began operating in these waters? How many more ships can you afford to have me sink before your father calls you back to Spain for retraining?"

"You arrogant low-born asshole," Marquis Muigel growled. "I will have your tongue for this insult!"

"Laugh ha ha," Diamond mocked the Marquis. "And that is another threat I have heard from you more than once, and never have you drawn that blade to attempt it. I would be disappointed, if I had not grown to expect it from you." Diamond reached back to the counter and took a significant draw of his ale, then set the tankard down with overt grace. "I think, after all these years of our off-and-on encounters, I do believe I have a good professional opinion of you. See, I am thoroughly convinced that you are nothing more than a thorn in the arse of Caribbean society. I am simply waiting for someone to excise that thorn, and incinerate it as is appropriate."

"Be my guest," the Marquis said, his sword hand on the pommel of his weapon.

"With pleasure," Diamond drew his own sword, an older broadsword that he had magicked to glow faintly purple and have significant offensive values. Immediately, persons in the first rank of tables pulled them clear to make room for the fighters. Both gravitated in toward the open area, though the Marquis made his moves forward early and started with the sword work in hopes of reducing Diamond quickly.

Diamond knew the play at hand, and was rightly unimpressed with it. The Marquis was no manner of strategist, and in all reality was far too hotheaded to be in command of a warship. He also made the mistake of going blade-to-blade with Diamond's primary combat sword, which was widely known for being able to chop the foremast on most ships down to size with little effort on Diamond's part.

In this case, when Diamond grated his blade down the edge of the Marquis' cutlass, the enchantments on the sword took over and penetrated the steel of the enemy sword with little hesitation. The pommel of Diamond's sword smashed into the cheekbone of the Marquis as the bulk of his sword-blade fell to the ground absent the handle or hilt. "What in the name — " The Marquis had little time to think about his best sword before Diamond brought his broadsword in against his midriff. The blade passed through, trailing with it a streak of blood that peppered a goodly portion of the bar patrons behind the Marquis. To provide an appropriate coup de grace, Diamond reversed his sword and stabbed down through the throat of the Marquis, twisted a quarter turn clockwise, and drew it out to finish the destruction.

"Your time on this mortal coil is done, Rico Muigel. May you rest in peace." Diamond looked up from his deceased foe, specifically to his First Mate. "Donald, rally the men. We take the Marquis' ship as our own, and add a second vessel to the fleet!"

Many a tankard and cheer were raised to the infamous Black Diamond, whose plans coincided happily with the wishes of the townspeople. To Diamond, he was not hearing cheering but the rally cry of people who were wearied of aristocracy from afar and their abuses of power.

* * *

**Author's Chapter Afterword:**

I am, as it happens, right at the point where I am achieving an absolute level of progress I thought not possible any more. I have always considered chapter length to be the great limiting factor of anything I do, and with chapter lengths nearby 20K per chapter, I always figured a chapter a week was a dead duck. Especially after I adopted a multiple-beta-reader policy to make sure my writing was clear of grammar and logic fault.

And, being a computer technician and proponent of Open Source Software, I find myself mollified that I must give credit for my present rapidly-expanding story work to something as nefarious as Google Docs. Being infamous for data harvesting kinda chafes the FOSS and internet security community to a significant degree, but in this case it is the truth. Google Docs allows me to work anywhere, and more importantly allows my beta readers to suggest edits or changes in realtime. Much as I am loathe to feed the beast, it is my best option at this time.

That said, onto the story. Not a huge amount to say today, the prose covers it all today. Pay special attention to Hitomi Takamichi — she will show up a lot in coming chapters, and for multiple reasons. Credit to Takeshi Yamato for a good foil to Eric Atrebas, because the Mage can't have it easy on the way to Ragnarok. Murphy says there shall be challenge, so...

The other major point to consider is the Imperial Japanese position on chemical weapons and their use for tactical issues. They did use chemical weapons, multiple times, in WW2. Without the United States erasing a few cities off the face of the home islands, inhibition on mass destruction would not happen. When you mix an attitude of centrality of place with tactical need for low-resource, high-casualty solutions, Chemical weapons look real attractive when you already have them in your arsenal. It does not make them moral, but it does make their effectiveness appealing.

Nothing else really to cover. **NEXT UP**: As Eric races to protect the Rebel cell, the Imperial Japanese and Nazis race to find him. Who will win the race, the Mage or the monsters?

**NOTICE**: I have decided to prepare a Wiki for the Multimage Chronicles, the Jokers Wild, and for the Archangel's Amazing Adventures, since the details are so complex that I need to create a full-on reference material for all the bits of data that these stories run on. Once I have the base pages and concepts up, I will include the address in my FFN profile and in coming chapters.

* * *

**Review Replies**: 6 Replies to Chapter 10. Incidentally, I am getting 3 reviews plus per chapter, which is a lot better than I expected for this story at this time. THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS!

_Takeshi Yamato_: I hope the contents of this chapter answers at least some of those question :) Glad to have you along, and stand by for further — I'm just building up a tank of steam here, so plenty of whoopass to come.

_Dark Phoenix Jake_: You saw briefly a hint of offense combining blade and firearm, and there is plenty of evidence how well it works in the defense. Stand by for further; Eric is just getting started.

_Necroblade_: Here is the first thing the OpFor comes up with to challenge him, and remember: the name of the game in the MMC and JW is asymmetrical warfare. If they can't challenge him directly, they find some other manner of method to kill him, or at least try.

_Biggie 1447_: I have been including date and timestamps for the sections, which helps with tracking the flow of events.

_Sieben Nightwing_: Now that Eric has a set of his own armor, and has been modding it to his specifications, things are going to get hairy quick. Of course, the Japanese and Nazis will have other ideas, but still...

_Meow 114_: Well, matters with and about the divinities will come to a head in Set 3. Things will be quite a bit more complicated than making pantheons. I won't spoil events to come, but hold onto that thought. It will get interesting, quick.

* * *

**The Gripe Sheet**:

No major gripes. As always, thanks to my betas **Necroblade** and **Takeshi Yamato** for clearing my usual gaffes!

* * *

**Footnotes**:

(1): **A**ir **D**efense **A**rtillery, a catchall term for anti-air weapon systems.

**Included Works**:

**DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS**:

—The Gate Spell. Normally it pulls something into the destination dimension, usually a high-power being, but in my works a Gate spell is effectively a zero-length pass-through for instant movement from location to location.

**ORIGINAL WORKS**:

— The Recall Spell is a personal concept that existed before Harry Potter did it. The more powerful a caster, the better it gets.

* * *

**Spell Registry**:

FORCE WIZARDRY Classification

GENERAL NOTE ON FORCE WIZARDRY: Three major points need to be made here:

(1): This has NOTHING to do with the Force as is used in the Star Wars series. In common parlance among the Magi, the Jedi Knight's variation of The Force is commonly known as Living Force or Midichlorian Force, and is differentiated against Distortion Force (Wizardry Force). The two abilities do not have common ground in any fashion.

(2): As Eric stated in the story body, this is a limited skill. In reality, it is also the only spell classification that has a sweeping limitation, in that it requires a positive trait to use that is extremely rare. Resistance to Force Wizardry is 1 in 7500, contrary to Eric's numbers, and use is 1 in roughly 44.5 million, which is slightly better odds of finding someone who can use it than Eric's teachings provide.

(3): Force Energy is effectively a hypercharge energy, based in no other natural element, and in use has strong resemblance to antimatter in its effect on normal matter, except that it does not create an explosive release of energy on contact. Energy created by the material annihilation is converted by the process into spatial distortion, which if in contact with a living being is absorbed by that being. In practice, the extra Distortion generated by the annihilation reaction serves to enhance the spellcaster's natural distortion rating; implications of this issue will be explored later in the MMC series.

GENERAL CHARGE subset

—_**Force Hand Charge**_: MinDR of 15.000, User must be Force Magic Compliant. One of a few spells designed to charge the body of a user, this spell at its core creates an energy field inside and around the hands that conveys all benefits and disadvantages of the spell. It is often nicknamed 'blue hands of death' for the ability of this spell to allow a spellcaster to literally reach through otherwise impregnable armors and materials to injure or kill persons or objects on the other side. The only effective defense against this ability is to engage the Mage in question with another Mage that has the Force Resistance trait.

—


	12. Dual Nightmare

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 12: Dual Nightmares)

(9 July 2041, 2030 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Bunker)

"It has been long since I saw sunlight, but all is for purpose," Eric conceded. "Regardless, the first four rings are done. Who shall they go to?" Eric asked.

"Anita, Carlos, Tony the mechanic, and old 'Major' Joe," Tabitha decided immediately. Anita was a given; she was the foremost disciple of the old Mage, and needed to be protected with such a rare (and destructive) skill as she had. Carlos was an operator, and more to the point knew how to be savage when operating. If the unit was ever gassed before full protection was in place,Carlos had orders to kill them all and make sure the unit had company in Hell before a fortnight passed. Tony was essential because he could keep the armor sets of Eric and Carlos in functional order, not an easy task. Joe was chosen because someone from the general personnel pool had to be in the list, and in all reality "Major" Joe could do a lot of scut work for the others if crap and fan collided.

"It shall be done," Eric answered. "If I may?" Eric gestured toward the door.

"Please do, they are your work, Eric," Tabitha answered immediately. "When do you plan on doing the next set?"

"I begin tomorrow morning. Tonight, I sleep on the roof, tomorrow I wake with the sun, two days and a sunrise real-time from now, four more rings shall be issued" Eric said.

"Please see to the distribution." Tabitha bowed curtly, to which Eric responded in the same fashion. Within moments, he was out of the door and headed toward the next stop — Anita's usual hangout, the training room.

Much as he suspected, Anita was working mightily on her bladecraft, to which Eric had tasked her in conjunction with basic spellcraft practice from the same book he started on. It did not take her long before she noticed the presence of her instructor. "Eric! You are done with the first set?"

"Aye, and the first ring is yours," Eric noted. "By order of the commander, yours is the first to be protected; wear this at all times, and you shall never know poisoning or gaseous harm again and you shall slowly heal damage done to yourself during day-to-day affairs or combat. Keep in mind, however, you can still be killed by wounds, but if you are not you will heal."

"Holy shit," one of the armor techs gaped at the declaration of effects.

"Who's got the next?" one of the general operations pool asked.

"Carlos, if anyone knows where he is," Eric noted.

"Right here, _jefe_," Carlos said. "I told the Commander to consider me last."

"I think she wants someone with a bloody streak protected, in case we are attacked before the whole unit is protected," Eric mused. "In all reality, if we are attacked and Tabitha orders us to hit them hard, I want a good second blade at my side for the direct assault phase. And a third blade, of course," to the last he gestured to Anita.

"The more, the merrier," Anita said. "When is Nicole on the list?" Anita asked fairly; she was worried about her friend and partner-in-rebellion being unprotected.

"I do not have that information," the Mage answered. "Still, if push comes to shove, each ring can protect multiple, you just have to be touching it and do not let go."

"Aye, sir," another of the armor techs noted.

"Third is Tony, of the Mechanics."

"Present, sir!" Tony stepped forward and came to attention.

"Yours is the third ring issued. Remember, it cannot protect you if you are not wearing it."

"Can it protect me if, say, I was to bead-chain it around my ankle, sir?" Tony asked. "We're not supposed to wear jewelry when working with the machines, safety concerns and all that."

"So long as the ring touches your skin, you should be good," Eric considered. In reality, more powerful relics could be worn over clothes and still do their functions, but Eric considered that this was not a good time to take chances. "Fourth is old 'Major' Joe, where can I find him?"

"Also here, sir," the guy in question was barely older than Eric. "Why me? I'm not part of the ass-kicking side of the shop, sir."

"I do not know why, Tabitha assigned these rings. All I do is issue them out." Eric handed off the fourth ring. "This was prescient, all four in the training room. Easily the simplest task in fabrication and issuing of these devices."

"Damn good, sir!" Tony said. "If we ever are gassed, and this thing saves my life, I will personally build a monument to you. Do you prefer stone or bronze?"

Eric grimaced. "Spare me the monument, Technician," Eric said heartily. "That you shall survive is testament enough. My purpose is life — I aim to ensure as many as possible live as long as they can, for that is the necessity of my duty. I do not need to be memorialized; I need only my victories, and a chance to aid the Fates in their quest."

It would not be said for many years still, but Eric's declaration of not wanting a monument built in his honor would be one of the deciding factors in the beliefs of those who would follow him. People would, and often times did, follow a man on a white horse. Even more people would live and die for a man who swore to defend them, and Eric was making that defense a reality for the rebel cell.

-x-x-x-

(12 July 2041, 1045 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Underground Rebel Bunker)

Priestess Hitomi Takamichi found that not having a tail — the guard she was normally accustomed to having — was a bit unsettling. Since she had engaged the Kitsune in direct combat the standing fear was that said demon would come looking for a rematch on her terms. The absolute last thing she wanted to suffer was being attacked from behind or the sides while doing her job, and everyone involved in the investigation considered it a very real possibility.

On the other hand, the help from the senior investigators of their order — specifically, Keiko Yamamoto — was not unwelcome.

"This is the scene of the second attack, an explosion with no origin," Keiko said mostly to remind herself of what it had been.

"It has been months, but the incident's echoes should still be here," Hitomi said.

"What do you seek?" the elder and senior shrine maiden asked.

"We have both checked the actual blast point, and found nothing. I seek the being, the Kitsune, who would have to be nearby to do this right."

"Ah, we could not determine who did it," Keiko admitted.

"And rightfully so," Hitomi said. "This city is crawling with transients, the displaced of our crusade across the world. The Kitsune takes refuge among them, in one of several forms, though she only attacks in the guise of a male street bum."

"Ah," Keiko said, mystified that she had not considered a bum as the target point until recently.

"And there it is," Hitomi said as she focused in on the ground below the attack point. "Just as every other attack, the same bum."

"Where was she?" Keiko asked, herself convinced that the standing theory of it being a Kitsune and thus female was applicable.

"A couple alleys down that way," Hitomi stood and fast-walked the distance to the alley in question. "She was sitting here, with clear view to anyone coming into or out of the club. Easy prey for a spellcaster."

"Okay, we know this much, now what?" Keiko asked. "You engaged her, how can we win this?"

"I want to understand how she did this and the rest of her strikes. If I get that much, I can get a better idea of her personae," Hitomi noted. Again, she took to her knees at the site the Kitsune used for the attack.

The impression was quite strong, enough so that Hitomi could hear the enchantment. "Keiko, what manner of spellcraft is this?" Hitomi asked. "The incantation is unusual. '_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy within in a massive Fireball**_' is what she said," Hitomi concluded. Fatefully, even with Keiko in close presence, her personal spellcraft skills were not enough to trigger the spell combined with part of Keiko's skills.

"That is high spellcraft," Keiko immediately judged. "The wizardry of high-level demons and Gods, short incantations that generate massive and swift effects. If what you said is correct, we are dealing with something that cannot likely be defeated by mere mortal hands. We will need to fight hard and with the best weapons of the Shrines to defeat this foe."

"High spellcraft," Hitomi groused. "This duty just became a lot worse than even I have been imagining."

"And you have all the reason to imagine bad things, for you have challenged her before," Priestess Yamamoto said calmly. "It is a terrible spell, likely that of a demon. _**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy within in a massive Fireball**_," Keiko said as she held onto Hitomi's shoulder, and was looking at the building next to them. In this case, Keiko's own spellcraft ability, combined with half of Hitomi's skill, and combined with a guy next door lighting a cigarette to provide an open flame nearby, was enough to activate the ancient spell in the center of the presently-vacant low-rise office building she was looking at.

The explosion was notable but significantly muted, though even at their low combined power it was able to blast most of the innards of the building into rubble and knocked out part of the wall next to them. "Oh, what the — what happened?" Hitomi asked. "Did we just — did we seriously just activate that ancient spell?"

"HOLY SHIT!" Someone on the street shouted. "Ladies, get out of there! That building is going to collapse!"

True to the passer-by's estimate, the building gave a loud groan of bending steel and compressing brick. Without word, both of the Miko were quick to take heel and move away from the building before they were caught in the collapse.

"OH MY GOD! MY NEW OFFICE BUILDING!" a Japanese businessman wailed.

Hitomi and Keiko simply turned away from the scene and began walking. Neither said a word about the incident until they were six blocks away.

"Okay, what's the lesson here?" Hitomi asked after the two took a seat on a bench in a park. A nearby water fountain helped to mask their conversation from eavesdropping, and calm their severely-frayed nerves.

"I am really reticent to repeat that enchantment again. I think I will write it down and that's it," Keiko said wholeheartedly.

"Makes perfect sense," Hitomi said. "Of course, if we could find the Kitsune, we could use that on her, end the threat right then and there."

"That...no, best we not trifle with arts we are not trained in," Keiko concluded. "There is no telling what might come of this."

-x-x-x-

(20 July 2041, 1330 Hours)  
(Southwestern Sao Paulo, Industrial District)

"You looking for work, _amigo_?" a guy asked as Eric walked past.

"No, I am employed, but off for a day," the old Mage answered. "Thank you, _jefe_," he considered that gratitude even for a rebuffed offer would help.

Times had changed, circumstances had changed. Eric no longer considered the cloak of a street bum to be of any use in concealment, that disguise had been compromised by a shrine maiden hunting a nonexistent demon. Thus, rather than hide and skulk, Eric considered that walking openly among the people of Sao Paulo was the new way to conceal. A goodly portion of the people around town were bums, certainly, but common persons outnumbered them by a significant degree and had more mobility.

Getting into and out of an attack zone, or just as appropriately camouflaging with the people around him, was now the method of operation. Spellcraft did not require any measure of isolation; on the contrary, having others around him seemed to amplify his spell's effects. This critical fact could make a significant amount of difference to a Combat Mage, providing concealment and providing extra striking power when used.

"A word of advice, _amigo_," the recruiter said. "Don't hide in the shadows. The Nazis are looking for someone that hides a lot."

"Oh? What do they seek?" Eric asked after a moment.

"I don't know, they won't say. Just that it hides."

"I will watch for them, and for the hiding one," Eric noted with a nod. "Once more, thank you."

"Stay safe out there, and if you need some work, swing by again."

Eric continued onward, watching the people as much as he was watching around himself for the Nazis or IJA, and certainly on the lookout for their investigators. Knowing how the people acted, how they reacted, was part of his cover legend. A mercenary soldier of centuries past tended to think and act differently from an urbanite civilian of the here-and-now, especially to things that would threaten him. Avoiding those critical telltales was now part of the job.

In this, his blending in was working dividends without him realizing it. Two undercover inspectors had passed the old Mage and neither suspected a whit of trouble from him. A third inspector passed him in three blocks, though this one was a little more obvious and Eric knew he was looking, though still the Mage went undetected. Such was good for a slight smirk as he continued onward, in search of the heart of the people around him — something they would rally to, if they had the chance.

It would not be another block into his wanderings before Eric heard the musings of an answer. "Did you hear, the demon went underground?" a teen asked another.

"Yeah, I heard she was moving to another city to keep killing more Nazis," a second teen said in a hushed whisper.

"No, I heard she's moving around in the city, but not willing to act right now because it's too hot. The Nazi Paranormal Division has bounties out on her."

"I so want to see her," the first teen said. "I heard she has huge gazongas."

"I dunno about that," the second teen said warily. "I heard she was kind of homely, you know?"

"Man, forget what she looks like, you morons! If she raised an army, she could take over this world from the jackbooted fucktards!" the third said in frustration. "That's why I want to see her, I want to see her as she frees us all!"

"Maybe she won't act unless we act?" the first asked.

"Maybe she's waiting for enough of us to act," the second mused.

"Or maybe she won't act because she doesn't think we want to be free," the third groused. "We need to demonstrate we want to be free, but we have to be smart about it. These guys are real assholes, so we need to be careful."

_The fiction has become the overriding reality_, Eric thought but did not say as he continued walking. _Because the Japanese are convinced I am Kitsune, they swear I must be female, and thus the civilians believe it as well. It is the perfect camouflage, to be shielded by the preconceptions of an enemy_.

The clatter of an approaching Kubelwagen gave Eric the idea of a lifetime to over-awe the teens. Four dead Nazis, and proof of a sort to the teens that the 'demon' had not gone underground — yet, at least. When the area cleared, Eric prepared for the picture-perfect spellcraft ambush. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy within in a massive Fireball**_," Eric declared coldly after he removed the ring with the translation ability in its magicks, so that no man would understand his Norse canting.

In this strike, Eric had chosen well. The road was not heavily populated or traveled; the Nazis were still on the move, with the blast launching their vehicle into an area that was uninhabited on inertia, and no civilians were in the direct blast radius. Those nearby the blast that were not hurt reacted in abject fear, to which Eric joined them even though he knew what was going on. The panic reaction would go a long way to cementing him as an average joe, but nothing could completely conceal him, he figured.

"Dude! Holy shit, did you just see that?" the first teen said.

"There wasn't a damn thing going on there! It just blew up!"

Eric remained with the crowd, but his thoughts were far more sinister. _Enjoy what you see, kids. The Rebels will find you, and put that energy to good use_, the old Mage thought. He was not incorrect, but not for the reason he expected.

-x-x-x-

(23 July 2041, 0800 Hours)  
(Wolf's Lair, Germany)

"This meeting is now in order," Chancellor Constance Hitler declared. "_Oberst-Gruppenführer_ Solde, please present your plan."

"Milady," the most senior General bowed curtly, as was appropriate to the Chancellor of Nazi Germany. Though he had watched her grow up and helped her father instill some discipline in her, he still knew his place vis-a-vis the Chancellor. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the necessary operations plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union will now commence. As we have ample forces in place to begin the assault, and we will have further reinforcements from our South American possessions in the next few months, it is time for us to put in position the beginning phases of the operation."

"Hear, hear!" General Johann Von Svdaov answered curtly. If ever there was an odd man out in the command staff of Nazi Germany, he was it. Von Svadov was Polish, but his family were early defectors during the invasion years; first supplying intel to the Reich, then working their way up in the rungs of power of the Nazi party. It was a slippery slope, but Johann was convinced the view from the top was worth it.

"Do we go straight to guns, or do we play a special operations campaign first?" _Obergruppenführer_ (Senior Group Leader, or effectively General) Diana Kierne asked immediately. Her question was predicated on the thought that the answer would determine how the conversation moved forward, and in essence who would have the most dirty work to do in the beginning phases of the campaign.

Over-General Heinrich Solde regarded her for a brief moment, but did not respond to her immediately with what ran through his mind. Senior Group Leader Kierne had well and truly earned her nickname 'bronze boobs' as a Special Operations Officer of the Waffen SS, personally salvaging more than a few hairy missions and burying thousands of the enemies of the State in the process. If there was anything major that had to be done, and Special Operations was to do it, her name was usually on the top of the list. She was also the most decorated officer in the room bar none, but two guys and the other lady military officer in the room were not far behind.

"Take a guess, woman," Solde usually used her gender as a taunt, given that Diana was easily stirred up by the subject of gender equality, such as it was in the Waffen SS.

"I'm going in on the ground a few months before you big burly boys come in behind me with the Panzer brigades."

"It is such a lovely ass to chase," _Brigadeführer_ Willem O'Connor said in his quirky Irish-accented German. Easily the lowest-ranked man in the room. he considered himself the man to prove to the Nazis that Ireland wasn't all about beer and leprechauns. More than any other in the room, his exploits on the battlefield had to be pushed hard enough to gain recognition, and now he commanded the Waffen SS Brigade of Ireland.

"Enough, you two," Heinrich cautioned. "As much as I like listening to your catcalls, we have real business to attend to, and the lady has a cabinet meeting in thirty minutes. Shall we dispense with the bullshit?"

"_Jawohl_, sir," Diane answered. The Irishman in the room simply nodded.

"Excellent. This campaign will be operated in five phases, and all five phases will be in conjunction with our friends in Japan. Phase one is where we begin with the preparation commando work. Pay attention, Kierne, you'll be busy here." Said general simply stuck her tongue out at the Over-General. "Our primary preparation work will be here in the south of the Soviet territories, mostly a lot of country land with the -stan suffix on the end of their names. I'll spare you my nightmarish pronunciations of those names, they have always tripped me up."

"You and half the rest of this planet," _Obergruppenführer_ Katy Jileave commented sourly. She had administrative command of the Luftwaffe, having come up through the ranks as a fighter pilot of her own right. She was also the only confirmed female Quad Ace in the Luftwaffe, though there were a dozen female Triple Aces under her.

"Regardless, we have six months to cause mayhem and chaos in the Soviet lower territories, though we have been whipping up the tribal groups steadily for years now. Surprisingly easy, that, give them the barest hint of an excuse and the mountain tribes will start kicking ass without taking names. One of our linchpin strategies will be to whip them up and turn them loose on the Soviet juggernaut."

"Easy prey," Diane said. "Been there, done that, have the shrapnel bits to prove it," and she was not joking in the slightest. Diane Kierne could literally strip buck naked and walk through a metal detector, with the expectation that it would go off nine times out of ten. Doctors estimated she had roughly four pounds of shrapnel in her body in inaccessible places, garnered in various battles with Soviet Spetsnaz, Hindu rebels, and Colombian mercenaries.

"Well, here's to another quarter-pound of frag and you living to tell the tale," _Brigadeführer_ O'Connor said at his most cheery.

"And you'll get a good chance to rack it up, too. In the next several months, I want saber teams moving into Afghanistan to begin fomenting rebellion and directly engaging Soviet high-value targets in the region."

"Doable, easily," Diana confirmed.

"Phase two of the plan involves direct action, but this is not in our purview. The Japanese will move directly against Soviet possessions in Eastern Asia, which should draw off some of their Guards forces to counter the attack in the arse. While that is going on, our naval forces will begin reducing Soviet airpower and naval forces along the attack line in the Baltic." One thing Svadov had been thankful for was the addition of projectors and computers to all conference rooms in the Wolf's Lair, as visuals could help immensely when giving a plan like this.

"Solid," Kady answered. "I take it the squids will want some cover from my flying wenches?" the Luftwaffe commander asked.

"Oh yes," the Senior Group Commander answered. "Phase Three is where the real fireworks begin. After we determine the Soviets have moved what they can toward the Japanese, we begin the blitzkrieg overnight — literally overnight, and begin the storming of the Western Steppes. It will be hard, and we will want to start in Spring to give us maximum invasion time, but speed is essential here — Napoleon, despite being a French pussy, almost stoved in the Russians a couple centuries ago. Speed killed him there, he outran his supply lines and starved after the Russians committed to a scorched earth policy. We will have to assume the Soviets will do the same in the here and now, since they have space to absorb us, but we will be bringing our own supplies en masse. We will not be repeating that short French bastard's mistake."

Chancellor Constance Hitler nodded silently. That was her one grave concern about the coming campaign, repeating Napoleon's great Russian screw-up, but apparently her subordinates were reading out of the right history books and knew what pitfalls to avoid.

"Phase four is variable at present; depending on how stubborn the Soviets get in defense, we would be in a siege action over the winter, or we could be chasing their sorry asses in Siberia. That depends solely on how they react, but we have plans for just about every contingency involved."

"If it ends up in siege, do we have plans to employ chemical or nuclear arms?" Diane asked.

"Chemical, probably, and over the winter to reduce their spread," Svadov declared. "Special munition employment will be considered in all phases, but the likely scenario is using tactical chem or tactical nuke to break a siege. Extra MOPP (1) gear will be issued to all frontline and support units as necessary."

"Excellent, we do not need to throw the lives of our men away this close to holding the world," Constance said. "And phase five?"

"The last phase is where we link up with the Japanese and finish the detail. This can take multiple forms, depending on the actions and outcomes of phase four, though the likely scenario is we consolidate somewhere east of Leningrad (2) and move against any remaining enemy forces. Once that is done, we hold our territory and pacify resistance. That concludes my briefing. Any questions?"

"Just one," Constance prompted him.

"Yes, milady?" the Over-General asked.

"When do you begin?"

-x-x-x-

(27 July 2041, 0605 Hours)  
(Western Sao Paulo, Residential District)

"This is always the difficult part," Nicole said. "I kinda hate waiting."

Anita snorted. "Some sniper you are," the spotter groused. "Or are you just feeling impatient today?"

"Don't really want to be using this part of my brain for this reason," Nicole admitted.

"You want to be using it for the other reason. Figures. Well, duty calls, so get ready for it."

"What are you thinking? Shoot and run?" Nicole asked after a minute of observation. The Nazis had not yet left their shanghaied apartment building, so there would be a smorgasbord of targets coming out of the three-story flat several blocks south of their location.

The operation was painfully simple: a classic urban sniper's hide in an unused apartment. Four blocks down the south window, the Nazi Paranormal Investigators had taken over an apartment building as quarters while they hunted 'the demon'. It had not taken the Rebel Intelligence long to find them, and now Nicole planned to turn the tables on them.

Of course, nobody had authorized this operation, but it fell under the whole 'protection of critical personnel' clause of her sniper duties. Or, at least that is how she would justify it to Tabitha if questioned.

"Huh? Oh shit," Anita said quietly. "We have Nazis nearby, _sturmtruppen_. On the sidewalk just below the window. Don't take a shot."

"I don't have a choice, here they come," Nicole said as the front door to the apartment building opened.

"Abort the operation, Nicole. Not worth it — " Nicole ignored the order to abort, and took her shot. Of course, given her reputation, she did not miss her shot and plugged a Captain in the face. "Damnit, here we go again."

"No, here you don't go again," a somewhat creepy voice said from behind the two girls.

"Eric? How did you — "

"We discuss this later," Eric ordered. "Through the gate, now," and the Mage jerked his thumb at the portal. As the two girls went for the easy egress courtesy of the senior Mage, Eric decided a trap was in order for the Nazis, and considered that a trick taught him by 'Iron Hand' Pevlekov was proper for this day. The Mage produced from his uniform a hand grenade, wedged it down between the door handle and the door frame of the primary door, then pulled the pin. As he heard the _Sturmtruppen_ approaching, the old Mage was quick to turn back to the sniper's hide and through the gate he created to extract them.

"I can't believe you disobeyed — Eep, Master Atrebas, I — "

Eric held a hand up for silence. "Wait for it, I want to hear how well this works."

From the far side of the gate, the unique sound of a door being kicked in echoed back to them. "ACHTUNG! GRENA —" The sound of the detonation came next, though it was muted because of the walls between the gate and the blast point.

"_Stäng baklucka_," Eric ordered to the Gate, which closed it. Of what he heard, he was visibly not displeased.

"Okay, that was cool, and more kills than I expected today," Nicole admitted. "Picking up more dirty tricks from Vladimir, sir?"

Eric decided her attempt to dodge was not going to fly. "Now, I would like an explanation why the Twins had to come to me in a panic, worried that you were about to be shredded by the _Wehrmacht_," the old Mage asked calmly, still looking toward where the Gate had been and not at the sniper/spotter pair.

"Erm, her idea," Anita jerked her thumb at the sniper in question. "Though, I did try to end the op before we got into it too far."

"I heard that much," Eric said calmly. "I asked 'why' for a reason."

Nicole decided that bringing the old Mage up short on this matter was an appropriate tactic here — technically, Eric did not outrank anyone else in the unit, despite the deference of others in the organization. "You do realize you are the most hunted man in Sao Paulo, right?"

"Yes and no," Eric answered coldly. "I am the most hunted woman in Sao Paulo. Were that I had any skill in cross-dressing, I might be reasonably easy to find; yet I shall reserve that talent for the perverts in the central park."

"Oh," Nicole half-deflated, realizing that Eric had already considered what she just did — and discarded it as an operational concept for a good reason.

"You attempted to distract, to deplete enemy paranormal search personnel," Eric judged correctly. "An excellent shot, regardless. I counted two bodies from that shot, and no doubt they will waste personnel and resources on investigating a single attack."

"But, can't they trace the gate here?" Anita asked.

"Possible, but unlikely. At most, they will see the terminus of the gate, the conference room," Eric judged, gesturing around the room for effect. "If they could determine the absolute destination from that, let them; clearly, they would be superior sorcerers to I, for I know that such methods exist but not how to do so."

"Oh," this time, it was Anita who deflated.

"Let there be a lesson here. I can use my sorcery to get you in or out of an attack zone, as I just did, but be smart about your actions in so doing. I cannot resurrect the deceased, and by disobeying the abort you were headed for that sad state of affairs with haste," Eric pinned Nicole with a stare. "Years of time behind a bow has taught me sometimes you do not take a shot, regardless of how fat and complacent the target is."

"I was trying to protect you, old crotchety-ass wizard," Nicole grumped, certainly not liking being rebuffed by anyone and by the Mage when he had no time behind a sniper rifle.

"Oh, this I know," Eric admitted. "And I thank you for the consideration, regardless of result. I will not say you did wrong, or your intentions were wrong, but I was leaving the investigators alone for a reason. As much as they are likely to waste resources investigating this attack, they will also redouble their efforts to find the female me that never existed, and they will look for fresh faces from this new attack on the errant assumption that I would not use a long arm to do the job." If anything, it had been shocking to the rebels how easily Eric picked up new and inventive ways of killing things — firearms being a nice new way to do the task to the old Mage.

"Okay, so now what?" Anita asked after a moment of silence.

"We shall work on your training in methods to use wizardry to get into and out of combat zones," Eric decided. "That is, after Tabitha has her turn with you," and Eric waved a finger at the door behind the sniper and spotter, where Tabitha was standing with the twins behind her. It was clear to everyone involved, she was more frightened than angered, which lent itself to what they expected to be a worse lecture than they received from Eric.

-x-x-x-

(29 July 2041, 1000 Hours)  
(Western Sao Paulo, Residential District)

"Watch your step, milady," one of the IJA investigators said to Hitomi.

"_Arigatou_," Hitomi said calmly as she skipped over the small crater put in the floor by the grenade. Most of the blood had been cleaned from the floor, but the walls were still covered with the streaks of the deceased. "What do we believe happened?"

"A sniper-spotter team was in the room to shoot up some of the Nazi Paranormals. We are assuming they took the shot and ducked out through a hole like what the Kitsune used to escape you, then the Kitsune put a grenade in between the door handle and door frame. When the assault troopers kicked the door in, the grenade spoon was released and the countdown began. Meanwhile the Kitsune cleared out through the Gate and closed it up behind herself, leaving us no way to pursue."

"The sniper and spotter, separate individuals?"

"Yes," the investigator replied. "We have skin oils and fingerprints from two, lab typed them as female, caucasian. The Kitsune was typed as male, mediterranean."

"That fits in pattern of her alter persona, a tall and south-Europe kind of figure, loves a good Roman Gladius," Hitomi nodded. "More and more curious. Now she has two apprentices, or two daughters?"

"And a fetish for killing people in ways that we cannot easily counter," the investigator replied indignantly.

"It is true," Hitomi conceded, patently unwilling to admit that she had used such a skill to level an uninhabited building. "And the Gate out was here," Hitomi pointed to a blank wall in the vacant apartment.

"Slick," the Inspector said. "The shot was taken from the top of this table, aiming out the partially-cracked window. It was particularly interesting that the window was opened only enough to allow the bullet past, the sniper sighted over the bottom edge of the window casement. Whoever this lady is, I do not want to meet her in a dark alley at night."

"And now she is apprentice to the Kitsune. Or is the Kitsune branching out into new skillsets?"

"A Kitsune sharpshooter? Scary thought," the investigator noted. "Can you tell where the Gate went?"

"Just a concrete room with some tables and chairs. Furniture looks old. Nothing else."

"Are we headed for a dead end?" the investigator groused.

"Not the first one in this hunt, my friend. This one is just more frustrating than average." Hitomi moved carefully over to the window to look outside toward the target zone. "Inasfar as I know rifles, I wouldn't think this an easy shot."

"For what it is worth, milady, the local Special Response Team (3) sniper agrees. Especially when you consider the shooter made the task even more difficult for herself by limiting the exposure of the shot."

"Huh," Hitomi considered the opinion carefully. If a professional shooter said it was not easy, that effectively ruled out the Kirtsune as the person behind the rifle — unless she also lead a double life as a female rebel sniper. "Okay, on the assumption that the Kitsune has an apprentice with a rifle, and herself is not a rifleman...or would it be riflewoman?"

"Either," the investigator judged. He was not one of the typical IJA male-dominant types, and it showed.

"Okay, assuming the Kitsune is not that fast a learner, where would be the best possible place to recruit a sniper such as she?" Hitomi asked.

"Simple. Every rebel group worth talking about has at least one sniper team, and usually one or two special operators that could double over as snipers." This answer was from an IJA Captain, not from the investigator.

"And Sao Paulo has at least a dozen rebel groups worth talking about," the investigator concluded.

"Okay, do we know of any particular rebel cells that would have a female and female team?" Hitomi asked.

"We suspect there is a cell somewhere in northeastern Sao Paulo that has that kind of capability, but we know nothing of their personnel. We don't even have a finger on them, in contrast to the usual Latin America rebel groups." Coming from a Nazi Waffen-SS Investigator, Hitomi considered it was a shocking revelation. The rebel groups around here were noisy enough that even the Shrine Maidens were aware of their viciousness. A group that killed silently and efficiently, leaving little or no trace of themselves, was clearly against type for the region.

"It would also be the perfect cover," Hitomi half-muttered to herself.

"What say, milady?" the Nazi Investigator asked.

"I was thinking aloud, my apologies. I considered that if a Kitsune was to become infatuated with an entire cell of rebels, it would be the perfect cover and augment to their already nasty capabilities. More so, if they are stealthy and silent about it."

"Okay, that's...not good," the Nazi noted dryly.

"What does that mean for us?" the IJA Investigator asked.

"Nothing good, but there are two outcomes on this one. First, if the Kitsune is simply attached to the unit, maybe training a person here and a person there, it could be progressively bad for everyone as time goes on. If the Kitsune is training a whole rebel cell in high ancient magicks as I have understood from her prior handiwork, well, I suggest we all be somewhere else."

"Oh, shit," the IJA investigator groused, finally understanding what was going on in this numbers game.

"No shit," the Nazi barked back. "We need to find this bitch and drop her hard, before things get really nasty and unmanageable."

"And that brings us back to the initial problem. We cannot find her, we cannot trace her, we cannot even sense her. It's like she is a demon that has completely concealed her demonic aura, leaving us nothing to find except her physical presence."

The Nazi investigator and the IJA investigator looked at each other, and both had dread in their eyes. If the standing subject expert had no options, they figured the whole South American command was screwed. They would be proven correct, though not for the reason they expected.

-x-x-x-

(1 August 2041, 1630 Hours)  
(Southern Sao Paulo, Industrial district)

Now that all the anti-poison rings had been issued to the necessary persons in the rebel unit, and Eric had two spare rings to assign as would be needed later, he was now back to free-roaming the city when he was not doing his assigned job of cleaning up the halls and spaces of the apartment building. Such an unusual job was not far from the ken of a Durgan Mercenary, though not one they were normally called upon except as punishment for training unit actions. Eric vividly remembered having to sweep the stones of the common circle and clear the Temple of Nike, two tasks his training unit had for failures. Such mistakes were not repeated.

The trick was now keeping his profile low enough that he did not engender suspicions while conducting his usual stalk-kill routine. The prevalence of electronic security systems and the easy take from them made hazardous any such actions. On the other hand, there were subtle actions he could take to diffuse suspicion over a wide variety of appearances, such as changing hair color, beard, beard color, adding or removing fake glasses, the options were impressive to anyone who had the right spellcraft and a willingness to experiment. Worst case, he had to 'undo' some cosmetic changes, a process that would take a couple days tops.

Right now, he was moving with a pack of day-laborers, heading from one job area to the next, looking for work. Eric intended to establish some street cred as a day-laborer, so he could use that as an explanation to his presence in Sao Paulo's numerous industrial areas, and justify walking from area to area while bypassing Nazi or IJA checkpoints.

"Whoo yeah! That's some sweet Nazi ass!"

"Knock it off, man. You know how Krauts are about that shit," one of the elder day laborers said.

Eric barely had a glimpse of her as he moved through the crowd, though she came within touching distance of himself at one point. True to their catcalls, Eric certainly would not have kicked her out of bed, but by the same token he wanted nothing to do with a Nazi — and even less to do with a SS Paranormal officer.

After a minute, it became clear to the crowd of laborers that she was following them. "Man, what's a little thing like you want in day-labor?" one of the guys near the rear of the crowd asked.

"I dunno, maybe just to figure out what jobs are available for day labor. I could always use a few extra marks."

"Couldn't we all," someone ahead of Eric complained.

"Hard to argue with that," Eric threw out for general consumption. A few assented to his opinion.

"Gentlemen! I have need of ten! It will require heavy lifting all day, so only the heaviest among you!" a recruiter said as they passed his warehouse.

"I'm out," one guy said. Four from the crowd figured they would take the task, leaving six, Eric, and the Nazi.

At the next building, the recruit call went up for light lifting and hoisting. "I shall do so," Eric answered.

He was rebuffed almost immediately. "I only need five, amigo, sorry," the recruiter answered.

"Not a problem," Eric nodded twice. "Will you need labor tomorrow?"

"Always," the recruiter answered.

"I may swing by early. How soon do you open?" Eric asked.

"Six, seven, somewhere in there."

"I look forward to it," Eric nodded and moved away with the only other day-laborer in the group. The Nazi wench was still tailing, but at a distance after having stopped to talk to someone.

"Hey, man, that's technical areas," the day-laborer said. "You won't find anything there."

"I think I shall pass through and head over to the east end, see what my fortunes look like over there," Eric mused, loud enough to be heard by the Nazi.

"Good luck, man," the laborer parted ways and headed down an east-west road as Eric continued north toward the center of town.

Much as he suspected, the Nazi was twigged to him, somehow. She maintained her distance and acted casual about it, but the stalk was roughly as obvious as a single water tree in the middle of a lake. Shaking her would be effectively impossible, as far as Eric could consider, and at this point he did not want to simply disappear. If he eliminated her before she could set up an ambush or called a report in, she could not compromise his cover.

Further north into the technical-industrial districts, Eric took note of a block with three buildings on it, one large factory and two smaller medium-industrial buildings, each split with alleys. Much as in the case of the misguided demon-slayer, Eric figured this was a good geographic area to force close quarters, which is what he wanted.

He walked up to the entrance of the alley, paused briefly to look around the area in a simulacrum of deciding his directions, and turned down the alley with an unintelligible grumble. Much as he suspected, his brief glance of the Nazi confirmed she was following him, though a bit too aggressively. The distance down the way to the bisecting alley was short, and once he arrived at it he simply walked a pace down and leaned against the wall to await her.

It was not long before the Nazi blundered into Eric's ambush, though he did not take immediate hostile action. He wanted an explanation. "If I may, milady, why are you following me?" Eric asked as she slightly bypassed him, which caused her to jolt significantly. "Not that I dislike the attention, mind you, but being followed by a lady of the SS in these parts is somewhat creepy."

"Don't bother playing innocent, Kitsune." Eric had to admit the lady had serious bravery to simply stroll up to him and put an SS honor dagger to his left shoulder, in what would otherwise be a threatening gesture if the SS trooper was not as small as she was physically. "I sensed your aura then, I sense it now. You're the demon everyone is looking for."

"Yes and no," Eric answered.

"Aha! I knew — EEP!" Eric silenced her by way of reaching out with his fast grip and grabbing the most obvious and nearest part of her person — her average-sized bust. "What — what are you — " she half-shouted in shock, effectively forgetting she still had the knife.

"_**Shocking Grasp**_," Eric said, completing a delayed-cast spell with his grip points being on her bust. Maintaining hold on the target was not a simple task as she jolted spasmodically from the monstrous electrical charge coursing through her body, but the ten seconds of spell duration came and went without Eric losing grip. Once completed, the cooked Nazi Paranormal Investigator lady fell backwards, a lifeless stare in her eyes. "Is it not?" he asked ironically of the deceased.

"Holy shit, dude, that was so fucking cool," a guy in the alley said. "You really cooked that bitch. My hat's off to you, mister wizard man."

"Ah, you know the truth," Eric said warily.

"Rebel, northern part of town. Word's getting around, amigo."

Eric flexed his hands in front of his face, a quizzical expression to his mien. "Those could not have been real, something felt off about them."

"They way they're perked up right now, yeah, she was a silicone squeak toy. Now she's just a dead squeak toy."

"And she lives not to tell the tale," Eric noted, though he did not know the enemy had assets in town capable of seeing how she died. He reached down to her bust and pulled her nameplate pin — TEANE, it said — for his personal collection. To this he added her service pistol (a Walther P99) and her SS Honor Dagger. "Souvenirs of this fallen."

"Good luck, man. I'm going back to work." The smoker swiped a badge and entered the nearby building. Eric dragged the body over nearby a dumpster to get it out of easy sight, and departed the area by way of his spellcraft. It would be hours before anyone noticed her missing, but a full day before a trash collector found her electrically-cooked corpse. Her demise would send shivers throughout the entire SS Paranormal ranks, and even throughout the Shrine Maidens would whispers be heard.

-x-x-x-

(4 August 2041, 1130 Hours)  
(Southeast Sao Paulo, Residential Area Slums)

Keiko Yamamoto stopped at the next bum down the line of shanties. "Are you willing to talk to me?" She asked in her most literate Spanish.

"I may, though you may not like what I have to say," the bum said after a moment of considering it.

"Fair enough," Keiko answered calmly, considering that any answer was preferable to none. More than half the bums she spoke to did not want any part of speaking to her. "What do you know about the demon that keeps killing people?"

"Not enough," the bum admitted. "I would like to meet him, thank him for clearing the world of some of the Nazis. Unfortunately, I am too old to actively help."

_Age does not discriminate when using ancient magicks_, Keiko did not say. "Have you heard anything about his appearance? I would like to meet him, just the same."

The bum said nothing for a moment. "I believe he was said to look like a Southern European, nothing more or less."

"Thank you," Keiko said, as it was given he was out of the loop if that was all he knew.

"One thing."

"Yes?" Keiko asked as she began to step away, but stopped.

"Don't provoke him. It ends badly for anyone who tries," the bum said with a calm demeanor.

"I have no intention of provoking her," Keiko said. "I just want to see the truth of the matter."

The priestess continued her walk through the shanty town, as much mollified by the conditions as the people scraping by within the substandard housing. In a world now commanded by the two most civilized governments, Keiko had come to expect conditions better than this, or at least she was telling herself that from time to time. This wasn't the first time she had encountered substandard living conditions, but the frequency of such locations were a bit higher than she really expected.

Though it chafed against what her brother and father had told the family, she had to admit that this was becoming the norm among Nazi and IJA holdings outside the home countries. Integration was occurring, but not fast enough to avoid these matters, these results. Even to a staunch Imperialist there was an unspoken injustice to these conditions, that in one of the greatest governments of all time room could not be found in society and productivity for these huddled masses. Still and all, the necessity of their actions were paramount: Japan had to rule, or at least co-command with another enlightened party. The criminality and weakness of governments and people around the world beckoned for proper leadership, or so she had been taught over the years.

Looking at the results, these shanty towns filled with the displaced, she was beginning to question the results of such beliefs.

Her PDA chirped briefly, a warning that she had received a message from someone inside the IJA. Intrinsically she detested the device because of the dehumanizing aspect of text communications, but it was also a necessary tool for her duties. Staying in touch was a need, and the extensive data network the Japanese telecom companies were putting up made accessing information on the fly an easy affair.

"It fits," she grumbled to the device. The report she had read was the electronic copy of the post-mortem on Lieutenant Kari Teane, the lead Nazi SS Paranormal on the Kitsune case. Her death had been by way of gross electrical shock, roughly ten seconds of it, and applied through her breasts into the rest of the body. The last was a significant, if unusual fact: the Kitsune either had a sense of humor, or a perverse streak, or both. It was also good to know that the kill was again with a lightning-based spell, as that followed in standing patterns. It did not help find her, but it did add evidence to the patterns.

"Can you spare a coin? Anything for my children?" a lady asked, from a semi-shadow enclosure, her two children huddled close.

"Miko do not carry money, it is against our order," Keiko answered with a shake of her head. "I can give this, though it is not much." She handed over a small ration bar to the lady, who gingerly accepted it.

"Thank you," the lady said simply.

Keiko continued onward, wondering what else would find her in these shadows. She did not really fear rebel attack in these parts, given that Miko were not really a military threat or part of the political establishment, but she did remind herself that her brother was an Admiral and ransom was a very real possibility. Still, this was a destitute area, not a rebel stronghold. The shadows held numbed eyes, not barrels attached to weapons.

Unbeknownst to her, the simple gesture of giving a destitute mother a ration bar for her children began moving opinions of the Miko away from the lump category of the rest of Japan. It would take years, decades still, but her simple choice now, and decisions later, set the stage for a real change.

-x-x-x-

(10 August 2041, 1830 Hours)  
(Underground Rebel Base)

If anything, it was a most unusual request from Eric. Surplus blankets and sound-recording equipment? They were things definitely available to the team, but the reason why had bewildered Anita and Nicole.

So, Nicole took it upon herself to see what the old Mage would want with the recording setup. Like usual, any time she acted without Anita to cover her arse, she barged head-first into the affair, or in this case Eric's apartment in the undercroft of the base.

"Old Mage, what are you doing with all the — huh?" Nicole choked when she saw the recording microphones aimed at a book, of all things. "What on earth can you record from a book? The sound of flipping pages?"

Eric snorted. "Oh ye of budding faith, listen but speak not, and ye shall understand properly."

"You say so," Nicole said as she leaned back against the wall — which was covered in blankets?

Eric tapped twice on a glyph in his book. After a moment, a song began to play. It spoke of the old Sirens, and of the tales of sailors led to their deaths by their voices. Notably, it was a live rendition of the song, and one Nicole could have sworn she had heard somewhere recently. After the song finished — actually emanating from the book, to her chagrin — Eric paused the recording system.

"This book is an interesting tome, and a fairly easy lesson in the art of creating relics. But, it does more than simply record songs as heard. It searches through known existence for different versions of the same song, and makes those available as well. You just heard The Siren, part of the Nightwish Suite as written by a now deceased songwright. Now, hear it, as most of Existence knows it, by the band that never was on this planet."

Eric tripped the recorder, and again touched a glyph on the book. This time, the song was quite a bit different and quite a bit more professional in its presentation. It was far more haunting in this studio version from the band, in more than just lyric.

"That is...beautiful. And creepy. Very creepy."

"And that is the power of this set of enchantments. It records what the user hears, the aura of the given song, and the known versions among Existence. Recording it back is another issue, but with this sound system, it should come out decently."

"So, why the fascination with those songs?" Nicole asked after a moment of considering it.

"Part familiarity with the song subjects," Eric answered. "Part enjoyment of the medley of voice and instrument. It sounds similar to some songs from my homeland, but only in passing. Lastly, the lack of compromise in the songs."

"Say what?" The subject she could understand, and the medley, okay, whatever floats a person's boat. But a song without compromise? "What difference does that make?"

"Some days, it makes all the difference. When you never compromise, you never allow yourself to give up. When you never give up, an enemy must work harder to break you. That is my purpose; I am not allowed to give up by nature of my duty." Eric sighed; the sniper could tell he was considering something, probably from his past. "Back in my Durgan days, we used song for marching, for drilling, and for war. We broke the morale of multiple forces by singing as we marched forward, sword and shield set. Our archers timed volleys to land among the enemy as we hit the crescendo of a song. Even as our forces debauched into each other, the rear lines would continue singing, a grim accompaniment to the melee at the front. Certainly, even I used song as a lure, drawing an enemy into prepared positions and trapworks with their blind rage and lust for conquest. There is an unspoken power in song, and when I listen to such things as the Nightwish Suite, to Stratovarius Orchestral, I hear a song, and I hear a living weapon."

"Ah," Nicole gaped, now understanding what Eric's fascination with the band that never was held for him. "You're going to turn that on the Nazis?"

"Yes, yes I shall," Eric answered calmly. "They are a being that uses fear to magnify their effective control. I will use fear to magnify my expected lethality, at least at a subconscious level. I will make my actions synonymous with the haunting strains of the Nightwish Suite, and whenever a people hears those strains, they will hear the fear ring inside them again, even if I am nowhere nearby. And I will make those same sounds synonymous for standing with the people, that when they hear it, they take comfort in knowing that an 'old wizard', using your tart description of me, stands between them and the monsters in their midst."

"With great power comes great, strange ideas," Nicole groused. "You really think that will work?"

"I have seen it work, but the first and greatest task of it is to simply imprint the base reaction. Once that is accomplished, and reinforced, the process magnifies itself. If I do this right, and do it consistently, there will come a time in the future that merely mentioning the name Nightwish will induce chills in their spines; hearing it, especially as if through the sound output on my armor, will cause bowel-shaking terror."

"Pevlekov," Nicole finally gauged. "You've been hanging around the old Soviet Spetsnaz quite a bit."

"The Soviet Special Forces have their own induced fear factor, a reputation built on hardness and lethality. I intend the same, but my aim is smaller. There are tens of thousands of Spetsnaz; I intend only a handful of Mages, until after the clearing is done."

"So, now you admit it," Anita said from behind Nicole. "All this time, dancing around how far you will go, and now?"

"Of late, it is become obvious that I have no choice." Eric sighed again, though this one was not a sigh of remembrance, it was of depression. "If I expect a modicum of peace and stability, it cannot be subordinate to the Nazis. Their way is genocide and living space for the masses of their 'master race'. The Imperial Japanese are even less accommodating to differing views, and will be the tougher force to break."

Eric idly flipped pages forward, looking at other songs he had recorded in the tome. "We are not going to let you do this alone, old man," Anita said staunchly.

"I welcome the assistance, for it shall be needed. Mostly, what we need is to turn the people of the world in against the Nazis. If we can accomplish that much, we can end this. Now, if I may, a moment of silence; I have an important recording to see to. This song, it shall be a centerpiece of my war in psychology."

Eric began the playback of one of the faster, louder songs of the Nightwish Suite: _End Of All Hope_. After listening to the song, through, Nicole was beginning to see the validity in Eric's designs.

-x-x-x-

(12 August 2041, 1330 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, abandoned commercial area)

"This is...creepy," Keiko admitted to herself even as she forced herself into the building in question. It used to be a school, but no longer; nowadays, it was more of a tenement for 'upper-class' bums in Sao Paulo. The kind that had an item or two to their names, or a bit more aggression and were willing to claim the better spots.

"Not really, I've seen worse," Arika Tōmei commented, though her voice betrayed she was not as convinced as her phrasing said.

The two miko continued into the building, seeing in their mind's eyes the pattern of an otherwise typical modern school building, and how students would normally be filling the halls if it had not been left destitute. In the here and now, the grim reality was evidenced in the passing of a dead body in the hallway, the trophy case with no trophies and no glass, even the spray-painted walls that made the building claimed by a gang that no longer existed.

"What terrible price we pay," Arika noted.

"We are not paying," Keiko groused. "They are," and she gestured to a pair of kids huddled together, making themselves appear as small as possible to avoid suspicion or inspection by a clear-dominant Japanese lady.

"Whoa, that looks different," Arika noted after they rounded a corner into an east-west hallway. "Look at the wall up ahead."

"I see it," Keiko noted. "What could cause this?" She asked as the two approached the affected area.

"It's like it has been sun-faded, which isn't possible! This is an inside corridor!"

"Calm down, Arika. One of the first things we've learned, anything involving the Kitsune could be unreality manifest, and still perfectly sensible." She traced the path of the sun-fading, and then turned around to face a doorway. "Whatever caused this came from inside that room."

Arika was the first to enter what used to be the faculty lounge. The paint was the same brown of the rest of the building, but just as curiously as had been the sun-fade spot, this room was also faded a significant degree. "It is...the same?"

"Who goes there?" A gruff voice asked from a corner in the room.

"I am a shrine maiden," Keiko answered. "You are a resident here?"

The man in the corner chuckled grimly, his eyes closed even in broad daylight. "Not by choice, Shrine Maiden."

"He looks rough," Arika commented warily.

Again, the man chuckled. "It is the last bit of my old self that looks rough. Today, I am harmless by forced blindness; I cannot see you well enough to do anything. Do to me what you will, others take their pleasure on me from time to time, just as they did with Catalina and Jose, until..." he shook his head ruefully, never seeking to complete the sentence.

"Forced blindness?" Keiko asked after she maneuvered a chair next to the man. Arika did not take a seat, despite the many chairs available in the room.

"I was blinded by a wizard, an old man who used a spell to blind myself and two of my friends. We were, we were arrogant gang-bangers, then, and we wanted this school to ourselves. Me, Jose, Catalina, and this building, until he blinded us all. I can...I still remember hearing Catalina's screams from time to time, as other gangs took her, until they stopped one night. I went searching, and found her the next day." He chuckled again, this time it was a hoarse, grim sound. "Jose, well, he lasted longer, but he died some weeks ago. I'm all that is left of us three. Do with me what you want, I'm ready to turn it in."

"No, I will not aid you in ending it," Keiko said softly. "I am here trying to find that old wizard, what we call Kitsune. May I reach into your mind to see what you saw at the last of your vision?" Keiko figured it was the best option of the time.

"Can you show me what I look like right now?" the guy asked.

"I will," Keiko answered. "Are we agreed?"

"Go ahead, lady, but be warned, it was bright. Might even hurt you seeing it in my mind."

Keiko repositioned her chair right in front of the guy and burned an image of him into her mind, then touched her forehead to his. With the contact, she was able to convey the image of himself to himself. "That is your present state."

"Oh man, I look worse than I feel," he admitted. "Now, you want to see that day? I'll think back to it."

Ironically, it was easier for Keiko to pick such imagery up than it was to deliver a more mundane image of the man in question. She watched the whole encounter, and watched it closely. The four candles, the book, the sorcerer, the blinding flash and the taunts, it all made sense after she saw it in context.

"You look like you saw a ghost," Arika commented.

"No ghost, a being of...of..."

"A being of nightmares," the guy completed the sentence offhand. "And every day, I relieve that nightmare right here. I keep coming back to this room, since I know it so well, but my heart has no heat for it. I lost my vision here, and I feel kinda attached to this place, but there's nothing here except shadows and dust."

"He cast the spell by reading it from ancient Nordic runes," Keiko said. "If he or she is anything, it works closely with European ties. This becomes more strange still."

"Did you get a good look at him?" Arika asked.

"Yes. He matches what the investigators found at that one scene. Male, Mediterranean." Keiko looked back to the man. "If I find and defeat this demon, I will take possession of her spellbooks and return to restore your vision."

"I don't think I will live long enough to do it, but okay," the bum said.

"Thank you for allowing me the sight of the demon. _Vaya con Dios_," Keiko said solemnly before she stood and turned to leave.

-x-x-x-

(15 August 2041, 1330 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Apartment Building over the Underground Bunker)

On a weekly basis, Eric would mop the ground-floor bathrooms and the tile floor of the foyer, at least to maintain the appearance of this being a clean and friendly apartment building. If anything, it was most certainly not friendly — ten lengths of a man below the building's basement, an underground bunker existed, and within existed two weapon systems that would cause the Nazis to shit bricks, should they know they were there.

Of course, in months of working the halls of the apartment building, he had been called upon by the maintenance personnel to assist in repairs, being part of the task of a janitor, such as it were. Eric made no objection to learning the tasks, given he figured he would probably have some manner of use for the knowledge in times to come. Plumbing problems were one of the major ones suffered in the building, but (rather presciently) there was a hardware retailer nearby that specialized in plumbing.

"Eric, got another one, _amigo_," the building complex plumber noted as Eric was finishing up the last of the foyer. "Apartment 303, toilet needs a new guts kit."

"Running toilet?" Eric asked, knowing that was the usual cause of needing a full innards kit.

"You got it. Here's twenty marks, you know the drill," the plumber said sardonically.

"All too well," Eric chuckled. "Almost done here, be moving in a minute."

"_Gracias_, _amigo_," the plumber (above ground) and Myomer Technician (below ground) noted.

Eric finished up the last vestige of mopping, stowed his mop bucket, and was out the door before two full minutes elapsed. Outside, the day was clear, sunny, and exceptionally cold to the Durgan, though European winters were worse than what Eric was living now. Being close to the ocean, snow was plentiful but temperatures were reasonably mild during the winter season. It had not taken Eric long to understand the measurement system for temperatures: anything below 50 was cold, anything above 80 was hot, somewhere in between was his optimal temperature range.

The march from the apartment building to the strip mall with the hardware store was nothing more than distance and time. The residents in the area had come to know Eric as a local fixture, the janitor for the six-story apartment building down the block, and an all-around nice guy. He had a few brief conversations on the way to the shoppe, but nothing major.

"Back again, _amigo_?" the clerk asked when he entered the hardware store.

"Indeed. Dying toilet, today," Eric admitted.

"Damn, you guys need to start buying in bulk," the clerk noted. His accent was off, clearly an expatriate of the former United States of America, though Eric knew it was deliberate. The clerk moonlighted behind the register; his real duty was as a Green Beret, helping to train the hundreds of rebels in Sao Paulo.

"I have said as much," Eric admitted as he continued the walk to the toilet kits. It was only a matter of moments for Eric to find the necessary kit, given this was not the first time (and not likely to be the last) that he picked up a toilet innards kit and installed it.

"Man, how did you get that job?" the clerk asked.

"Janitor in the building, and I consider myself an unofficial apprentice to the maintenance personnel," Eric admitted, at ease with his new cover legend. Gone was the street bum former farmer, today Eric was just another guy, lucky enough to have a minor job and thankful for it.

"Well, everyone starts somewhere, even late. And pass this to the manager, will you?" It was a sales flyer, but Eric knew there would be a note inside it for Tabitha. Given Eric was in the store frequently, he was also a common conduit of messages heading between Tabitha's cell and the other cells. "We're running a sale on lawn equipment."

"At this time of year?" Eric groused, seeing the grass-cutting devices highlighted. "Insanity, _amigo_. A good wide shovel is of more utility at this time," the old Mage said in jest.

"Hey, boss says he wants to clear the old stock, so..."

"I will speak to Tabitha about it," Eric promised.

-x-

It was Hitomi's turn to sigh. Once again, the trail went cold after the attack on the SS Paranormal investigator, and even the data brought in by Keiko was not helping much. One downside of the Nazi presence in the entire world was how freely people could move now, excepting going into or out of the Soviet lands. There were a lot of south-Europe natives that were now native to south Brazil, and that number was increasing rapidly as those persons moved into opportunities in the new conquests.

One good thing about Keiko's search, she had a very clear image of the wizard in his prime, and she had relayed that vision to both sketch artists and to the primary investigators (including Hitomi). In retrospect, the appearance of the guy was certainly unchanged from when she crossed blades with his gladius, meaning this Kitsune probably had limitations to what she could do for her male form. Still, nobody had seen her female form, which lent a whole new dimension to the investigation that nobody had begun to breach.

So, when a very striking figure in plain street clothes exited a hardware store across the road from where Hitomi was dining, stretching to work kinks out of his back and holding a bag of plumbing supplies, Hitomi nearly gagged on her tea. It took her a few moments to master the reaction and make sure she did not draw attention to herself, but in the end it was fruitful. The guy (who nearly exactly matched the wizard, just with a different hair color and clothes) turned up the road and began a solid march toward the north.

"Will that be all, milady?" the waitress asked.

"Yes, and keep the change," Hitomi deliberately foisted off a ten-mark note for her meal, which was not quite double an overpay, but not asking for the 4.50 change back was unusual. The waitress did not say anything special, just thankful for the rather large tip from someone she expected nearly no tip from.

Without further word, the shrine maiden was on the move and this time smartly. The death of the escort she had, the Warrant Officer, was ample evidence that she had to play real smart with this foe or she would be the next one in a casket on a plane headed back to Japan. Even if the present Nazi theory was accurate, this was an ancient soldier that had become a wizard, he was still incredibly dangerous either in close or at range, as his knife and pistol work had demonstrated.

Hitomi followed carefully and at significant distance, so as to not be obvious about following. She was also not dressed as a shrine maiden today, she was wearing local clothes, which counted as a significant violation of duty dress code but was necessary against this foe. The outfit of the Miko was obvious in these parts, and she was no fool.

On the other hand, the trail was short. Hitomi watched from half a block behind him when he entered a decent six-story apartment building. Hitomi moved through backyards across the street until she could see into the lobby of the building, where the Kitsune was talking to an older lady with some measure of deference. She knew this was the area, intrinsically she could sense the aura of power behind the lair of the Kitsune. It was somewhat against character, given Kitsune were mostly solitary, but there was bound to be a rampant extrovert in every group, Hitomi figured.

Her text message went out quickly to all involved parties: _Found lair of Kitsune. Apartment building just north of my coordinates. Need immediate response_.

It would be a fateful text that engendered a response well outside her imagination...or desire.

-x-

Tabitha was waiting for Eric on the inside of the apartment building, an unusual circumstance to a degree. "Is something amiss?"

"Yeah, we have a request for a direct engagement from several other cells. Where have you been?" Tabitha asked, though not in an accusatory fashion.

"The plumber tasked me with getting toilet innards," Eric replied honestly.

"The most powerful man on planet, chasing down toilet parts? Something doesn't sound right about that," Tabitha groused. She thought she saw movement behind a house across the road, but could not identify it. Said house also had a dog or two, so she brushed it off. "Anyway, hand off the toilet parts to the plumber and get down to the bay. We have work to do."

Eric nodded solemnly. He knew there would shortly come a day when he had to use his armor for real, and it sounded as if this was to be it. On the other hand, he figured this was also a good opportunity to really give the Paranormal investigators 'a hard-on' as Carlos was wont to say, when he blended sword, firearm and spellcraft combat in one engagement. "I guess it is time to combine these capabilities," he thought aloud. "I am on it, milady."

A short hike up three floors to the 303 Apartment (4) and Eric delivered the parts, though he had to duck out of fixing the toilet. Given the tenant of that apartment was not in the unit, he said the Manager had reassigned him and said no more. The plumber nodded and turned to the task at hand, as Eric turned to the stairs and descended into the basement to head down into the bunker.

In the HVAC room, a floor panel could be moved to allow access to part of the elevator hydraulics, and another panel could be lifted for access to the elevator electrical circuit. Below the electrical conduits rested another hidden latch, though this one was mechanical and unlocked a panel in the wall of the HVAC room. That wall panel led to a confined staircase that itself led to a bunker below the apartment building. Such were the necessities of secrecy in the war with the Nazis, for they were truly ruthless and brutal to anyone that hid stuff from they.

Once inside the bunker, Eric took the stars further down to the fourth floor, where the armor manufacture and maintenance was conducted. In this case, Eric's concern right now was getting into his armor and gathering his gear for combat. He started with the arms, which he laid out on a table in the armor room, pistol, magazines, German StG-78 assault rifle and magazines, German MG '42 and ammo belts, six grenades, a Panzerfaust, his magicked broadswords (both), his Gladius as a backup weapon, and the most important, his spellcraft library plate. Because Eric's armor was not easily modifiable due to the magics on it, special link harnesses had been added to the standard connection points on his shield and armor to allow him to attach the gear.

Once his weapons were present and readied, Eric began the process of first undressing down to underwear (2 minutes), then mounting the armor (30 minutes). Before that time was up, his purpose would change drastically.

-x-x-x-

(15 August 2041, 1415 Hours)  
(Northeastern Sao Paulo, Residential Areas)

The two Special Weapons Technicians considered that today was both a good day, and a terrible day. On the good side, they now had positive identification of the lair. On the bad side, this Kitsune had set up shop in the middle of a residential area, meaning deploying four canisters of blister agent would likely kill roughly fifty, sixty thousand persons total, and hopefully among that number includes the Kitsune herself.

The other option was a Nazi option, and not a pleasant one at that.

Given the prevailing winds were east, the technicians parked their truck and trailer two blocks east of the target zone and climbed out. The junior technician pulled the trailer hitch apart as the senior technician climbed into the enclosed trailer to activate the four canisters. The timers had been pre-configured for a ten-minute burn, allowing them plenty of time to put out radio warnings to personnel in the affected area and for the technicians to get clear themselves.

"Hitch is done," the junior tech said. "I see two kids."

"It's the price we have to pay to clear this threat," the senior tech said. "Timers are set on the containers and trailer cover." The trailer shell would stay closed until the containers were ready to begin issuing gas, then the hard-shell container would pop open to expose the containers to open air.

"I'm not hanging around. Let's go, _sensei_."

"Agreed."

The two technicians drove east, to deliberately avoid the gas, though they would find that they could not escape the death surrounding this decision.

-x-

(15 minutes later)

"Stage five armor sealing," the armor technician noted. "You will be ready to move here in about a minute, Master Atrebas."

"It is still bizarre to hear that, especially at my young age of 33," Eric groused.

"It still counts. 33, and you already command unimaginable spellcraft," she admitted. "And, more to the point — " her declaration was cut short by the sound of an alarm buzzer going off. "What is — oh my God, it's the chemical weapons alarm!"

"What? Chemical weapons?" Eric asked. The armor HUD came up a moment later, signalling he was ready to begin operations. "Is your ring on?"

"Yes, I have it," the lady armor tech was wearing the ring as a necklace, which was perfectly acceptable a way to wear it and still benefit from the enchantments on it.

"And I have mine, so we are protected at the least," Eric groused. "Quickly, assist me in arming up. Is the lift down?"

The tech darted to the door. "It is down. What do you want me to do?"

"I have to arm up, then get topside and neutralize the chemical weapons. I have spells that should do the job, but I will not expose myself without arms."

"Ah," the tech mouthed. "Here," and she began preparing the weapons for mounting to Eric's armor.

-x-

Hitomi had ignored the order to clear the area, since she wanted to be here to see the response force and join in the engagement against the Kitsune. After a half-hour of waiting, she decided to investigate the box truck that had pulled up in the alley next to the building. It was a dead-end alley that stopped by a door into the basement, though there was something else in the alley built into the ground. What it was, she could not tell from the road and lost sight of it with the arrival of the truck.

Oddly enough, she coughed once when she was about halfway across the road, though thought nothing of it. She coughed again when she approached the truck itself, but again passed it off to the environment. Something smelled foul in the area, moreso than when she arrived, but nothing was visibly wrong to cause it. When she arrived at the truck, she squeezed herself between the neighboring building and the truck, with another cough for her effort. When she cleared the truck (the driver had gone inside the building), she arrived at the mysterious plate on the ground, which was clearly stenciled with the word 'equipment elevator, max 8000 pounds'. Recessed into the wall next to it was a garage door, which made its purpose obvious on common inspection.

A pair of coughs preceded her lifting up the weather cover on the elevator control panel. In all reality, the control panel was far too complex for an elevator that had maybe two feet of vertical travel. It also had a socket key port, which suggested it had more purpose than simply lifting a lawnmower from storage to ground level.

Before she could begin investigating what the combination could be, she noticed that her lungs were beginning to ache as would asthma, but this burning was ramping up a lot faster than her childhood medical problem. The coughing increased exponentially, even as she began hearing movement in the elevator from deep below the ground.

"Damnit," she cursed between coughing fits. "Chemicals," she gasped. She had heard rumors that the IJA Special Forces were planning on using chemical weapons in the theater, but she never considered they would use them as a first response to the Kitsune.

As the pain in her lungs and the rest of her body increased, she lost the strength to stand, to breathe fully, and even began losing her sight to the chemical agent. Even still, she could hear the elevator approaching from below ground, even if she could not see it.

-x-

Anita had joined Eric on the elevator before he began the upward journey, though it was a painstaking process to travel it upwards. Time was of the essence, and a lot of people above him did not have time to spare for a slow-ass elevator ride. "Why?"

"They must have identified this as my residence," Eric answered the question from his apprentice. "When we get to the surface, find me two things: as many leaves as you can pull off a tree, and something to write with — chalk, spray paint, what have you."

"Sir? That's a weird request," Anita noted.

"To generate the poison-clearing cloud and rain, I will need a rune. To prepare the healing spell and undo the damage from the chemical poisons, I will need the leaves or pine needles to activate the spell — and the more leaves, the wider and more powerful it shall be."

"Understood. And if the Nazis or IJA show up while you are doing this?" Anita asked fairly.

"They can be dealt with," Eric responded flatly. "They shall be dealt with."

As the elevator passed a predetermined point, the top hatch opened up to allow them access to open air. Another thirty seconds of travel and the elevator hit top end behind the truck that was supposed to take them to the engagement area. "Oh, the truck! I forgot about it!"

"Clear it, I will — wait, is that...?" Eric trailed off, seeing the coughing and pain-wracked body of a lady in the alley behind the truck.

"Yeah, it is, just dressed different," Anita said. "Wait — sir, what are you — she's the enemy!"

"Even a hated enemy does not deserve to die like this," Eric said plaintively as he kneeled his armor next to her. "Now, clear this truck and secure me some chalk or paint, Apprentice. Time waits for nobody, and time is something this city does not have."

"Yes, sir," Anita said in a clipped fashion. She did not agree with his decision on the shrine maiden, but unlike Nicole she was not about to argue the matter with someone who could annihilate an entire panzer division with a single spell (or, at least, will eventually do so).

Eric had made sure that at least one of the spare anti-gas rings was in the storage of his armor, so when he knelt by her, rather than using any spells on her, he simply slipped the ring on her middle finger. "Keep this ring on you, and it will stop the poisonous effects of the gas, Miko," Eric ordered.

The miko nodded, unable to speak through the coughing, and before Eric could stand properly the truck was moving. She would be too damaged by the poison to do anything for the time being, though the ring would slowly heal her injuries and chemical burns from the agent, so he left her in place.

Once out in the street, he could see the neighbors laying about on the ground, just as badly exposed and wracked, in most cases worse than the miko. A part of his training came to mind, a special sensor set integral to the armor. "Armor subsystems, sensor control, begin chemical weapons detection and triangulation," he ordered of the voice control system integral to the armor.

"Begin movement," the armor replied. Eric walked to the sidewalk and began a short trudge north, though only a few paces was necessary to establish a detection line. As soon as the navigation caret came into view, Eric turned to the right — east — and began marching in that direction. When he crossed over to the next block (and had to literally stomp through a chain-link fence), the caret shifted a bit but still pointed mostly east. Another block east and the caret centered on a military trailer that was open-top and had four canisters in it, giving off visible amounts of fumes.

"Anita, Eric, I have the gas source. I will be destroying shortly. Do you have any paint or chalk?" Eric asked by way of the radio built into the armor.

"Yeah, I have some spray paint. Where are you?" Anita asked after a moment.

"Due east of the building. There are multiple trees here, so make haste."

Eric shifted his armor's display through pre-recorded image files and spell listings, looking for the necessary entry. He knew it was likely he would have to use these spells for countering chemical warfare, so he had installed an expanded data storage unit to the armor and had one of the armor techs show him how to transcribe the spells and pictures into the databank. The Mage found what he was looking for partway through the listing on healing spells, just where it was expected to be.

"These?" Anita looked at the nearby canisters. "What do we do to them?"

"Nothing," Eric replied. "This spell will neutralize the gas, even in those canisters. The spray?" Eric received the can and began tracing out the necessary rune on the pavement of the road with spray paint, a very odd but permanent solution to having the rune in place. If there was any question of the presence of the mage in this area, anyone who found this rune would believe differently before the end of the day, but in all reality a simple rune was nothing compared to his second option.

It took two minutes and forty seconds to completely draw out the rune, but when completed Eric began chanting the necessary spell. "_**Transcendence of mercy, breath of life, wisdom of health be bestowed; whereupon all nature exists to live, give air of health and rain of clarity. Cosmos, bring purity unto these lands through this Rune of Antidote with a Cloud-Fog of Panacea.**_"

Within a moment of the completion of the spell, a green-clear particulate began issuing from the bounds of the glowing rune. The duration of the proper rune for the spell was several hours, so Eric figured it would clear the bulk (if not all) of the chemical weapon toxin from the area. He had no way of knowing that the toxin was already outside the farthest reach of the panacea spell, and that the exposure was so great that people were already beginning to die before the fog or rain of healing would even touch them.

Anita had not been idle while her master was placing the rune. She had approached a nearby cedar tree and began pulling the hefty needles from it, knowing that the spell Eric intended worked with either common leaves or the needles of a coniferous tree. By the time he called for the needles, she had a bucket half-full of them. "Is this enough?"

"Easily more than needed," Eric replied. "I doubt the spell will consume all this, but better more than less." He hefted the bucket and turned away from the fog issuing from the rune. "_**Green leaves dance, spirits of Nature energize unto one of your creation, restore the form intended with Sylvan Regeneration,**_" Eric chanted the spell that his sister had used to rebuild a dying tree in years past.

The difference between that training and Eric's use of it today was simple. First, Eric was far more powerful now than his sisters were then. Second, Crystal had focused the spell into a single rune and enchantment that limited its effects but super-concentrated the results; Eric intended to use the spell with only his power and the base area of effect, which would target a needle on every living person and heal a goodly portion (if not all) the damage caused by the chemical agent.

When the spell took hold, the entire contents of the bucket emptied out, all glowing green, and scattered high into the air. The cloud of needles dispersed radially to find and heal everyone in the vicinity that was still alive, including (unnecessarily) Eric and Anita.

After he was satisfied his efforts were working, Eric turned back toward the apartment building. On the way, he stopped at the body of a young mother and her husband, seeing her laying face-up and staring blankly into the sky. He stopped for a moment and regarded the now-deceased family. After a silent viewing, he kneeled next to her and swept closed her eyes. "Your time on the mortal coil is done. Rest in peace."

-x-

The ring given her by the Kitsune had stopped the increasing pain, but the pain was still there to a severe degree. She still could not see, could not breathe properly and had nearly no energy to stand or walk. Not that she was interested in doing any of the above with such pain flowing through her body and particularly in her lungs.

She did not know when, or why, but after an amount of time she began rapidly improving. When she regained vision, she saw several green glowing needles stuck in her chest, and on touching one realized it was a glowing pine needle. After a few more moments, she had enough of her distance vision back to tell that similar needles were poking the people around her that were not yet dead, and even a lady from the apartment building that was also carrying a rifle. "You are all right?"

Hitomi simply shook her head negative, unwilling to take a chance on speaking even despite the rapidly improving conditions inside her own body.

"Must have been Eric. Some kind of healing spell. Don't move, and just let those needles do the work — here," and the lady plucked two more needles out of her own arm and stabbed them into Hitomi's arm. They were briefly painful, but after that she began feeling better still. Even as the lady began loading up crates of ammunition into the back of the truck, she still did not move, wary that she might act against a Japanese person if provoked.

"Suzanne, load up heavy on arms and munitions. We have a job that must be seen to," a haunting voice (at least to Hitomi) ordered.

"Way ahead of you, sir. Do you want anything special?"

"I will require more ammunition for the machine gun and my pistol. I intend to make a statement of this affair, and it shall be a statement heard loud and clear." Hitomi barely managed to avoid gaping at the massive, armored monstrosity that had entered the alley. "Shrine Maiden, you should be able to stand and breathe properly now, given you have five of the needles in you."

Hitomi tested it, and found she was easily able to stand and breathe properly. "Now that she's healed, do we shoot her?" a third lady asked as she approached, with two teens trailing behind her.

"Stay thy arms; I doubt they will be needed after such a hard lesson as this," the Mage responded. "Before we continue this conversation, shrine maiden, I believe you need to step out of the alley and look around the neighborhood. Remember, by design or by accident, the Imperial Japanese intended you in their ranks," and he waved at the houses across the road.

Hitomi warily passed by the massive armored trooper and the young scrapper. After Hitomi passed the sidewalk and into the road, she heard a single question from behind. "Why are you doing this, Eric? She's dangerous," the scrapper asked the master.

The answer would be more haunting than the question. "As am I dangerous, young one," the Mage answered calmly. "To whom we turn our blades is the question that must be asked. If even after her superiors tried to poison her in a failed attempt to silence me, if she still sought to engage me, then I would happily return the favor. But I shall not simply strike her down without her knowing the truth of the monsters she serves."

And monsters they truly were, Hitomi had to admit. The dead were numerous on the streets, in crashed cars, even hanging out several of the windows in the apartment building. Hitomi considered herself lucky that the Mage had given her a ring to counter the poison effects, or she would be among the dead the IJA would be cleaning out of this area.

Hitomi stood there, numbed by the bodies and the implied carnage; for what was visible, there would be more in the buildings, especially the diners and stores down the road. Easily, there would be thousands dead just in this area, and probably would have been more had the Mage not acted.

After two, three minutes of the sounds of their truck being loaded, Hitomi had to turn back and ask the inevitable question. It was no surprise that the Mage was watching her deliberate, but far more of a surprise that nobody had an arm pointed at her. When she approached the armored Mage, all activity stopped. "One question. Why?"

"Why did I save you, or why did I act with spells to stop the carnage of a chemical attack, or why do I now plan to make a butchery of the Imperial Japanese military?" the Mage asked in counter.

Hitomi was brought short by the series of questions, as all three of them were valid in this case. "Okay, all?" She asked after a moment.

"I saved you because no man deserves to die in this fashion. When I said that earlier, I meant it for good reason," he retorted sharply. Hitomi flushed slightly, reminded of her _sensei_ when she was training with the sword, and how he also had a disdain of repeating himself. "I act with spellcraft to stop this because death on this scale is counter to my commissioned purpose, and because I am a civil, honorable soldier who disdains civilian casualty in a purely military engagement." he sighed. "Because of the former two problems, I am now in a position whereby I must act to protect lives en masse, and that means direct and lethal engagement against your paymasters and their sycophants. This will get messy, but right now I have no choice but to engage now with the hope that I can stem the tide of civilian casualty."

"I — I do not serve these monsters!" Hitomi shouted before she thought the matter completely through. Only after the words escaped her did she realize the nature of her transgression, and it was a severe one.

"No, you may not serve them, but you are loyal to them to a fault," the Mage responded coldly. "A man of your caliber does not achieve position and a modicum of power without loyalty and skill. It is expected, but just as a mercenary of my caliber is always considered expendable, a soldier such as yourself will be consumed if the mission requires it. You and I are not significantly different, shrine maiden, except in the choice of following one's heart or following the sociopaths in command."

Hitomi frowned mightily, considering an odd turn of his phrasing. "Why did you just call me a man?" She looked down the length of her body briefly. "It should be fairly obvious I am not."

"For months, you have mistyped me as a female fox demon, even after your direct and inconclusive sword battle several weeks ago. I figured an indirect correction was in order," Eric said with a clear tone of amusement over the linguistic nuance battle.

"I, err, I apologize," Hitomi bowed to show her sincerity. "But, if you're not Kitsune, what are you?"

"That will be explained soon enough," the Mage said pensively. "Do not concern over me, shrine maiden. Your concern and prayers need to be directed inward, to understand where you are and what you want to do going forward."

"We're ready to move, Eric," the elder lady in their group said.

"Your armor?" he asked.

"I will armor up shortly, and Carlos is still mounting. We will be out on another transport. Get moving."

The Mage turned back to the Shrine Maiden. "Decide for yourself _what_ you want to serve, not _who_. People are corrupted routinely. Concepts are never corrupted, just misused. Until then, I suggest you keep that ring, lest you find yourself in another gas attack."

Hitomi watched silently as the Armored Mage climbed up into the load bed of the box truck and pulled down the roller door behind himself. She knew it was a very painful, conflicting lesson to swallow, but it was a necessary lesson.

_There are demons in the world. I have been working for them_, Hitomi silently admitted to herself.

-x-x-x-

(15 August 2041, 1830 Hours)  
(Bivouac site, Imperial Japanese Armor forces, northeast of Sao Paulo)

A camera sweep of the area showed a battalion of armor in line, with troops making preparations to refuel and arm the tanks and APCs. They were loading up heavy, though most civilians watching would not understand that. Two IJA checkpoints had been sundered, with reports of an attack and a failure for callback, something was on the warpath and the expected direction of assault was right toward an IJA Armor Regiment. A platoon had been moved forward to engage and delay whatever was stomping forward, though reasonable expectations showed that this would be the stopping point.

"This is Action Reporter June Weiss, reporting live from the site of Imperial Japanese armor forces loading up to strike into northeast Sao Paulo. We are told that a chemical weapons attack was conducted in that region in preparation for the elimination of heavy rebel assets, though unconfirmed reports show that the chemical weapon attack has had mixed effects — it was lethal close to the center of the attack zone, and lethal at the edges, but a wide section of the attack zone had only minor effects or no effect whatsoever. Captain, can you comment?"

The microphone and camera focus went to an Imperial Japanese _Tai-i_ (Captain) of armor, ostensibly the commander of this force. He was also tasked with the escort of the two Chemical Weapons troopers that had planted the device, and the force commander had requested he grill them on why the area attacked had not been completely depopulated as was intended.

"We are preparing to move into the infested area and clear," the Captain replied, using the tried-and-true Japanese euphemism of 'rebel infestation' to denigrate the rebels. "At least some of the targets required the use of heavy chemical gas to ensure a kill, though as you mentioned, we have reports that the operation to deploy gas was not as successful as we intended. Speaking from a standpoint as an infantryman, I consider this a good thing; I am not a proponent of chemical weapons in civilian population centers, so the less casualties the better."

"Does this mean your men will have a tougher job?" the reporter asked.

"Unlikely," the Captain judged. "The area where we intend to strike was depopulated as intended, and that number will surely include the rebels we target. Areas outside the target zone — "

The first indication that something was going wrong was the most visceral for the viewing population. Around the world, 800 million viewers each saw three rounds from a heavy-round assault rifle strike the Captain in the upper chest, all three rounds in the sternum in a 2-inch circle. The camera tracked the Captain as he dropped to the ground, clinically dead before his body finished collapsing, and that was only the beginning of the nightmare to be shown.

In following with IJA policy, the entire battle would continue to be recorded and aired live. Ostensibly, the policy was for propaganda value...

"There! Target in the open!" The cameraman took a knee as he spun to sight up the aggressor, and he was extremely surprised to see a massive shield with an assault rifle poking around it. The trooper behind the shield took several shots, three-round bursts each, and the cameraman could only count the bodies as they dropped. Return fire came from one of the APCs, a machine gun on top of the unit, but the trooper behind the shield simply one-hand aimed the assault rifle at it and returned fire. Two bursts, no more machine gunner.

"Infantry forward! Take it down!" A Lieutenant shouted.

To the camera it was clear this was not an ordinary rebel. A grenade launcher strike caused the enemy to swing his shield wide to brace, and when that happened the entire form was shown to the world. Whatever it was, it had armor — and a lot of it. The disruption was temporary, though, as the enemy regained balance and maneuvered the massive roman-style tower shield into position where the enemy could not use grenades against him, and he fired another burst from his gun. Three tracers came out, which was a common infantry tactic to signal an empty weapon.

Normally, one would expect an empty weapon to be a priority for reloading, but in this case it was not the choice of the armored rebel. The rifle went in behind his shield, and an empty (armored) hand came out from behind it to point at an APC. "_**Fireball**_!" the enemy trooper shouted, followed immediately by an explosion on the front of the APC that flattened several scout cars nearby as well as at least two squads of infantry. The blast wave also disrupted the loading of the munitions into the Type 115 Main Battle Tanks, a costly problem for the armor force.

"Oh, my God," June said into her microphone.

The enemy pointed to another APC, and its collection of infantry. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy in a massive Fireball**_!" he chanted the spell in full-length, easily audible to the camera from their distance, and this time the explosion was big enough to throw the APC, eliminate all the exposed personnel in the area, and set off a secondary explosion in the ammo trucks that were supplying the tanks.

"Oh, good God, this is the Kitsune! It's real, and it's here attacking the Armor forces head-on!" June said in terror to her microphone. The cameraman was steady enough to keep his camera on the armored trooper, though this time he was shocked to see the appearance of an old MG '42 as his follow-up weapon. The result of his first burst was frightening — a running trooper cut down as he passed from behind one tank to the next, even as the armor crews tried to get their machines started and moving.

"_**Dark Rays of Light gather, a column of abyssal energy ascends to the heavens in a Dark Pillar**_!" the armored trooper shouted, this time pointing to a Type 115 MBT. The energy shot up through the main body of the tank and ate at the material until what was left of the gun barrel collapsed onto what was left of the front of the tank hull. Nothing from the turret main structure to the back remained, all consumed by the column of darkness.

"He just — holy shit, he just destroyed 90 percent of a tank in one sentence! This is unreal!" the Cameraman said in a grossly unprofessional fashion.

"You're watching it right here, man," June said as the trooper rattled off a couple more bursts into tankers not fast enough to get into their tanks.

"_**The native winds of the Sylvan lands controlled, the arc of air shall ascend in a Gale Blade**_!" The trooper was indicating the second tank in the line, which had finally turned over its engine just a moment prior, but with the strike of the wind blades the barrel fell in half and all the hatches on the tank popped open from air pressure inside the tank's hull. Anyone that saw that had little doubt the crew were dead by the time the barrel hit the ground.

"Oh shit! That's half the tanks!" the cameraman said.

"Whatever you do, do not turn your camera away. Even if he kills us, the people have to know. The military has to know!" June said, declaring she would not retreat even though she was already suffering abject terror.

The trooper had closed now to within mere paces of the third tank, though the MG '42 was back in its hiding spot and the trooper was now empty-handed again. Oddly, he pointed to the fourth tank, not the nearby third tank, though why he did was painfully clear a moment later. "_**The skies of eternity shall reach to the lands of forever with an arc of Lightning**_!" After a second, the lightning bolt struck the top of the tank and caused the ammunition safety panel on the 135mm gun to release all the explosive force of the ammo. The turret began spinning counterclockwise, and continued spinning for several rotations before it stopped.

On this fourth tank, the world was mollified to see the armored trooper draw a green glowing sword and simply chop into the side armor, then drag the sword down the side of the tank, cutting through threads and wheels the whole time. The cameraman jumped up to follow the action, and arrived at a viewpoint just in time to see the trooper jam the sword all the way to the hilt into the engine block of the tank, which crippled it for the battle. "Shield clear!" the trooper shouted, before he ejected the pin that held the massive battle shield to his left forearm, which freed him up to climb on top of the tank hull. Up on top of the massive machine, it took only a simple swipe of the sword to detach the gunbarrel from the turret, then he turned around and chopped the locking bolts off the commander's hatch of the tank. The enemy simply lifted the tank hatch with his foot, stabbed the tank commander in the face (after being shot by the TC several times), and dropped a grenade into the innards of the tank.

Military analysts all over the world's media would agree that the trooper standing on top of the turret, one foot holding the TC hatch down before the grenade detonated, was simply a matter of arrogant symbolism, but nobody denied that it made for good (if gory) television. When the grenade popped, he simply jumped off the top of the tank (and landed directly in front of the camera), sheathed his sword, and walked back to the shield. Reconnecting it took twenty seconds, enough time to hoist it back up from the ground and reconnect the pin that held it in place on his forearm.

"This...one trooper just eliminated an entire armor platoon, and it looks like he's just started. Hold on, we've got more action to the left!" June commented as a quick spurt of gunfire was answered by assault rifle rounds, and the last APC in the unit getting into motion. The trooper used the last of his mag to drop the loose infantry, tossed aside his assault rifle, and reached into the back of his shield for something. June couldn't tell what it was until he had it clear of the shield, when she realized it was an old Panzerfaust.

"Oh SHI — " the Cameraman half-shouted. June turned away from it, since the exhaust from the rocket was aimed right at her, though the cameraman simply closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. The loud burst of the rocket translated almost completely to static in the microphone of the camera, but the visual of the exhaust blast, followed quickly by a gout of flame from the back of the retreating APC as it skidded and rolled onto its side, was shocking to most of the viewers.

The trooper simply slung forward the expended Panzerfaust tube, looked from side to side, and straightened up from his semi-crouched brace position. When he turned around, the armored trooper was staring right into the camera, and a world saw their first full view of an Armored Infantryman, and their first view of an Armored Combat Mage.

For the Nazis watching in their barracks or at home, it was similar to looking at what would be the legends of the old Norse Einherjar, the personal infantry of Odin himself. Among the Japanese, they saw the visage of a demon born of metal and magic, taking the form of an armored Samurai without horse. To the rebels around the world, they saw a destruction engine that was two parts technology, three parts magic, and ten parts foul attitude. Even its stride and clanking of armor plate against plate was aural fear factor.

"Okay, do we run now?" the cameraman asked the reporter.

"You can run if you want," the armored Mage answered in clear, literate Japanese. "I have no intention of killing the press, unless you are foolish enough to engage me."

"Why? Why all this?" June asked as they backed off so the trooper could walk past them.

"Before I answer that question, ask the Imperial Japanese high commanders why they turn chemical weapons against the civilians they have conquered. When you have that answer, I will justify my actions."

"But, you've killed many — "

"And I shall kill many more, until the threat of mass murder is done," Eric cut the reporter off sharply. "The men you refuse to ask hard questions of, they toy with the lives of an entire planet. They kill people with no regard for purpose or reasoning. I have seen atrocity in my time, but this is beyond the pale. Thousands dead in Sao Paulo, all in a useless attempt to kill me. I am immune to weapons of mass destruction, but the civilians are not. Because of this, innocents died. I will tolerate this wanton cruelty no longer. If there shall be death, I say let it be among the Imperial Japanese, among the Nazis!"

"What?" June asked arrogantly. "You? One being? You'll take on the entire Nazi and Imperial Japanese governments? Their entire military?"

His answer would send a shockwave of fear throughout the world. "Damn straight I shall," the trooper answered. "I am Eric Atrebas, commissioned spellcraft operator to the Fates, and today I declare I am now the reaper of Nazis and Imperial Japanese. As long as it takes, I will sunder them all to dust and echoes, even if it takes me decades to do so. I have time, I have patience, and I have millions of spells and enchantments at my disposal to slay the demons. You ask if one being can destroy the Imperial Japanese? I ask you, can you find one being on this planet capable of stopping me from destroying the Imperial Japanese?"

Without further word, Eric Atrebas turned north and began marching. The camera would track him steady until he was out of sight, but his visage, his words would echo throughout the corridors of power for years to come.

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence...)

"This is not going to be a simple battle to break, milady Atrebas," Sir Garnett said stolidly. "This fortress here at the headlands of the river valley has command of all roads through to Paris. We cannot bypass, or we are hit in the flank. We cannot lay siege, because we don't have the necessary time by your schedule. What do you suggest?"

Queen Beryl looked up from the map table to one of the other ladies in the room. "Mindy, can you breach the walls of this fortress for the advance force? We need to take it, but it does not have to be intact."

Sorceress Mindy Vickers looked over the sketches of the fortress, returned by a wandering minstrel that served as a spy for the Black Army — the unofficial name given to the combat forces of Queen Beryl Atrebas. It was a common four-wall castle, nothing special or outstanding in terms of defense, and something the Sorcerer ranks were trained to deal with handily.

"Sir Garnett, if I could get a strike team inside the fortress, would it be beneficial to the Queendom to take it intact?" the Sorceress asked.

"Of course, beneficial, as we could stockpile supplies, route troops, and defend against a counterattack from it," Sir Garnett said. "Still, I do not want to risk men when not needed. If it would be easier to flatten it, I would recommend it over an attack that might not work."

"How many men, inside and unharmed, would you need to take it definitively?" Beryl asked, liking the way the conversation was going.

"I would say seventy on the inside, Knights or Men-At-Arms, decent armor and weapons, and at least five Support Sorcerers. If you could assign any Magic Knights to the detail, it would reduce casualties significantly," Sir Garnett considered. He carried a magic sword, a gift from the Queen herself for his staunch service over the years, but he was no Magic Knight.

"Lord Foxwilde, what is the status of Red Team?" Queen Beryl asked the highest-ranking noble in the room.

"Last I heard my Queen, chasing barmaids and prostitutes," Benjamin Von Foxwilde answered truthfully.

Beryl nodded twice. It was not an unheard story for the Magic Knights in general, and for Red Team in particular. Despite the crippling social constraints of Christianity in the middle ages, when Beryl's Black Army overtook a land the unattached girls were quick to throw themselves at the victor. It made sense in context, given that playing nice with the victor usually meant you lived to see the next day in these years of tribulation. Beryl strictly forbade the practice of 'camp whores', but town-based prostitution she allowed under strict and humane regulation. Being a former prostitute herself, she knew what were good working conditions and what were not.

"Find whatever rock they are hiding under, and kick it over," Beryl ordered. "They have work to do for the Queendom, and waving their cranks at barmaids is not on that list today."

More than a few persons in the room chuckled, most of them nobles that were serving with her on campaign. The nobles who converted to her camp were not used to her staunch plebeian qualities, and especially were not ready to deal with a prostitute-turned-sorceress. On the other hand, those that adapted quickly learned that they could make a real killing for themselves if they learned to play nice the whole way around. Those that resisted, or were hostile, well, they faced the wrath of a people scorned.

The loud appeal of the Queendom of Beryl was the power of the people. The combat ranks were entirely commoner, no nobles had any notable placement in the sorcerer's ranks or among the Magic Knights. A few nobles had magic devices of their own, gifts of one type or another, but that was the measure of it. There was real power in spellcraft, and all the spellcraft rested with a prostitute and the disabused common mass. It was really an implied threat against the nobility, and most nobles heard that threat loud and clear.

"It shall be done, milady," Lord Foxwilde answered immediately. "Sennel, get a messenger moving," he ordered immediately thereafter to his aide-de-camp.

"_Jawhol_," said aide answered before he ducked out of the tent.

"Sir Garnett, pull a hundred of the best and brightest Men-At-Arms to take this fortress. Mindy, call for volunteers among the Support Sorcerers for the task. Ten would be optimal. Make sure you get them inside promptly and take the fortress rapidly. I want this tent a mile southwest of the fortress before nightfall, or I want to know why."

"It shall be done," Mindy answered before she blinked out of the tent.

"I am on it, my Queen," Sir Garnett answered before he turned to duck out of the tent.

"Highness, a courier from the Third Army," the tent guard half-shouted into the interior.

"Courier, enter and deliver report, please," Beryl ordered.

"Aye, ma'am," the young man answered before he stepped in and bowed. "Milady, General Kluse reports he has overtaken Reims, and is prepared to move on the Marne River immediately. He asks what direction he should move next."

Beryl shifted the map enough that she could clearly see the lay of the land in that area. "Make his next destination Senlis. We will merge the armies there, and move against Paris as one body. Get a move on, lad," she gestured him toward the door.

"It shall be done, my Queen," the teen said before he ducked out the tent.

"The force we could bring against Paris with both armies merged would be terrible," Lord Foxwilde commented. "No manner of French monarch could hold us off for long."

"That is the point," Beryl commented dryly. "The faster the corrupt monarch is deposed and eliminated, the sooner the French people can turn their efforts to bettering themselves rather than feeding that Queen Bitch on the throne."

"If I may, I would like the honor of dealing with this wench, when the time comes, milady," Sir Garnett commented. "I can think of no better way to signal the deposition of corruption than to make it a public spectacle, and with this blade," he patted the sheath for his magicked broadsword.

"You may have the task when that time comes," Beryl decided. "For today, we worry about taking these river lands and removing the militia that guards them. I will join the front shortly; prepare a combat escort, and I shall breach some lines."

If there was any one less-than-favorable task when serving under Queen Beryl, it was keeping her out of trouble on the front lines. On the other hand, her individual striking power was immense, and her sense of the flow of battle was impeccable. No commander wanted the task of protecting the reckless Queen, but every commander loved having her sorcery available to shape the battlefield.

Sir Garnett decided that today was another day in the life of a Knight of the Darkness. Nothing unusual here, just ass-kicking and name-taking. He was looking forward to eventual retirement, and all the spoils that he had accumulated from the conquests of corrupt and feckless and bigoted and cruel nobles. If anything, the Queendom was on a fast-track to power, and the Queen herself was at the leading edge where she should be.

Where else would an Atrebas be, except solving the big problems and preparing Existence for the war Ragnarok, he wondered.

* * *

**Author's Chapter Afterword**:

Any of you analysts that have been reading so far, probably saw this shift in ops coming. No surprise there, the Nazis or IJA were bound to do something to set off the professional assbeater they couldn't find, so...

The major note of the day for this chapter is the chemical weapons attack on the city, in an attempt to get at Eric. It is not shown in most history books, but the Imperial Japanese had a history of using chemical weapons on civilian targets in real history before WW2. That's a no-shit fact; look it up if you don't believe me. They also had a habit of testing their secret weapons on prisoners, and other assorted inhumane treatment of personnel. Generally not nice persons any way you cut it.

The first of the minor notes is the hijinks between Hitomi and Keiko. Leaving aside their flattening of the building, their trepidation on repeating the spell is actually unfounded. Contrary to my spellbook entry in prior chapters, I have always intended the Fireball to have a material component, despite it being one of the lower-level combat spells available to a Mage. They activated it by way of pure chance, someone close enough with a flame, Keiko's primary spellpower plus part of Hitomi's skills, and the internal detonation variant of the spell, all adds up to a flattened building. It was a first taste of spellcraft for both, but their analysis of what exactly manner of spellcraft it was is not quite accurate. High Ancient Spellcraft is something for a Mage far closer to Transcendance and into the lowest levels of divine ranks; Common black magic as Eric mostly uses does not qualify.

The second minor point is in Eric's 'statement' by way of butchering a platoon of armor on live television. Eric made a deliberate effort to use each of the spells that he had become indirectly infamous for, to make sure the Japanese knew they had failed in their chemical attack, and to demonstrate how lethal those spells were even when applied to one of their best defensive measures. The dark energy column was somewhat a new spell, technically the darkness variant of that classification of spells and not significantly different from Eric's training with the other family members before. The Gale Blade spell is the same as used by Beryl on a pimp, but this one was used from the ground up and far more powerful than Beryl could have managed.

And, on the trailer section, pay attention to Beryl as these short sections go through. If there is anyone in the family that could really rival Eric in terms of strategic skill, if not direct combat skill, Beryl is it. That will also come back to haunt everyone in sections to come, that I guarantee.

Really, not much else to say at this time. The Narrative says it all. **NEXT UP**: Eric begins the first crusade of what threatens to be a long life full of them...

* * *

**Review Replies**: Four reviews, always a pleasure for this less-viewed of my stories. Thank you all!

_Necroblade_: Don't worry too much, you will not have long to see how well force wizardry does the job.

On the lemons, well, I believe I have covered that already. Since I have more stories coming down the pike, I will need filler, so...

_Sieben Nightwing_: You are right on the tactical application of a Gate spell, but the same thing applies to a teleportation spell for short-range operations, or a blink spell for close-combat maneuver options. The wizard has the options, and the IJA has only fears that Eric will be playing on soon enough.

_Biggie 1447_: Well, Keiko will be 'investigating' the site of the armor attack, but the base assault is now officially small potatoes compared to the monster in their midst.

_Meow 114_: Magitech is moving in the direction of reality, but keep in mind that technomagic / technomancy is a separate discipline that Eric does not have training on or ready access to. It will show up in other stories, of course. Wayy too much material there.

* * *

**The Gripe Sheet**:

No major complaints. All is well due to the efforts of _**Necroblade**_ and _**Takeshi Yamato**_.

* * *

**Footnotes**:

(1): **M**ission **O**riented **P**rotective **P**osture **Gear** is the technical name for NBC Warfare gear. It provides basic protection to soldiers from exposure to biological, radiological, or chemical threats, though it is not a permanent solution or will not protect against continued exposure to high levels of threat.

(2): **Leningrad** is the Soviet Name for St. Petersburg.

(3): **Special Response Team** is a common and actual appellation of the term SWAT Team (**S**pecial **W**eapons **A**nd **T**actics). Despite its common use in media circles, very few (if any) actual SRTs in law enforcement actually call themselves SWAT except as an inside joke, and never in any official capacity. SWAT was a term coined by LAPD chief Daryl F. Gates to describe the purpose of the team; it is not really considered a proper name.

(4): European-style floor numbering. The ground floor is listed as G, and the floors above it start as 1, 2, 3, etcetera. Thus, in common American numbering, in this case Apartment 303 would be on the 4th floor.

* * *

**Included Works**:

ANIME:

—Yorioden Samurai Troopers / Ronin Warriors: The armor in use by the Rebels (and a major part of Eric's combat schema now) is based on the armor of Sage of the Halo, with no spikes and add a Roman Tower Shield fashioned of half-inch steel. It was deliberately designed to invoke a samurai's armor to mess with the Japanese.

* * *

**Spell Registry**:

COMBAT WIZARDRY Scope

Combat Attack Branch (Black Wizardry, Assault Wizardry)

—_Dark Pillar_: MinDR of 30.000, no material components required. The Dark Pillar spell generates a column of negative (Dark-element) energy between two points in space. Against most targets, this spell causes only minor energy damage, though against creatures or persons weak to Dark-element attacks the damage is increased exponentially. Energetic damage from the column is calculated at 100 Joules per DR of the caster per second, with a diameter of 1 foot per 5 DR and a height of 1 foot per DR. The Dark Pillar is stationary once cast; it is entirely possible to generate the column in front of a moving target and watch as the target simply moves through the beam for extensive damage. FULL ENCHANTMENT: "_**Dark Rays of Light gather, a column of abyssal energy ascends to the heavens in a Dark Pillar"**_

TEMPORAL SPELLCRAFT Scope

Movement Branch

—_Gate_: MinDR of 50.000, no material components required. At the base consideration of this spell, it simply opens up a hole between one point in space and another point in space, and objects that move through the hole come out the opposite side of the Gate. Nothing special to it, in all reality. The Gate has a maximum width of 1 foot per 10 DR, and a maximum duration of 1 minute per DR. The range of a Gate terminus from the origin is covered below; unlike most spells, the maximum range is not linear.

The Gate spell has two major caution points: One, if the gate closes suddenly while someone is in the process of crossing, it will chop them apart in so doing. Second, the edges of the gate are not solid objects; if someone tries passing through a Gate and clips the edge, it will cut through them and leave the exposed section at the old location. For this reason, it is common practice to use the Gate sparingly, when other methods of transport are available.

At less than 100.000 DR, the Gate can only be used with a target point in the same dimension. At 101.000 DR, the Gate Spell can be used to cross dimensions.

For the range of the spell, it is calculated as follows: 1 million miles per DR, and for each level of transcendence the base number is squared. So, at 105.000 DR, the total range is 105,000,000^2 or 11,025,000,000,000,000 miles, or in light-years it is 1875.583 LY. As the equation compounds itself, even a low-order divine being has easy galactic mobility, and someone that surpasses the ranks of the divine has trans-galactic mobility in addition to interdimensional mobility.

FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Walls among space and time be rent, distances be bridged from here to [DESTINATION] with a Gate **_(NOTE: The [destination] must be a seen location that can be described or referenced by the spell, or the caster is gambling on where the Gate ends.)


	13. Standing Against Omnicide

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 13: Standing Against Omnicide)

(AUTHOR'S NOTICE: Several sections will have latitude / longitude coordinates in them. If you have Google Earth or are willing to use Google Maps, you can see the location of the actions as you read the sections involved.)

(16 August 2041, 0600 Hours)  
(Wolf's Lair, Germany)

"This emergency session is now in order," Chancellor Constance Hitler said. "Okay, what the hell manner of freight train just hit us, and now what do we do about it?"

"Ma'am, that freight train is what the Japanese have erroneously been calling a Kitsune — a Fox Demon," The _Oberstgruppenführer_ SS Paranormal Division noted. Karl Hohrmann was a man who took his job very seriously and was considered unflappable. Today, however, he was visibly sweating bullets on the material he had.

"Okay, that thing had no resemblance whatsoever to a fox," Constance noted with a soured expression.

"I said erroneously referring to it, milady. The person inside is probably human of some fashion, and that armor is technologic, but the presence of wizard skills is definitely confirmed."

"No shit," General Johann Von Svadov said by way of salutation when he entered the room. "Four dead tanks in less than a minute, and that's not even counting the infantry. We're on a whole new level here, Hohmann. We need everything you have and we need it now."

"You're getting it, right here and now," Karl answered warily.

"Calmness, ladies and gentlemen," Heinrich Solde cautioned after entering the room in front of Senior Group Leader Kearne. "We have an extant threat today, we do not need to make enemies of each other."

"What's the expectation of being able to hurt this thing?" _Obergruppenführer _Katy Jileave asked after following the commando into the room.

"Unknown at present, but for certain machine gun and grenade are effectively useless against it," Hohmann answered calmly. "I have my personnel looking into options on the non-technologic side, but for now we need to consider a technologic response."

"Special weapons?" _Obergruppenführer _(General) Keane asked.

"Chemical was a complete failure, the IJA tried to kill it with a blister agent and it failed completely," The SS Paranormal General answered calmly.

"You all heard the creature speak, it said it is immune to weapons of mass destruction. If it recognizes the terms, and it can call spells like that, I am going to safely assume anything NBRC is out the window," General Jileave opined.

"Could we nuke the piss out of it and see how well it operates glowing in the dark?" Diana Keane asked.

"How you kill a lot of creatures from old myth is with a sword, a big pair of balls, and some judicious decapitation skills," _Brigadeführer_ Willem O'Connor said from just inside the doorway. "I watched the footage, and it appears the armor just around the neck is segmented. It might be doable."

"That sounds fucking insane, your drunk-ass Irishman," General Von Svadov replied in clear disgust.

"He has a point, however," _Oberstgruppenführer_ Hohmann defended the Irish Brigade commander. "I don't know how well a sword will do against this kind of armor, but many things in old legend were dropped by decapitation. We may want to consider the same possibility for this threat, especially since I am not inclined to see how pissed off it gets should we try nuking it."

"This is unreal," Chancellor Hitler groused. "It mixes technology, infantry, and magic, and makes them all frightening."

"Even if we kill it, the actions it has taken will make it a living legend," _Obergruppenführer _Jileave considered. "We will never outlive this tale, even after we bury it."

"I do not care what it takes, kill it and make sure it stays dead," Constance ordered.

-x-

(Same timeframe)  
(Imperial Japanese Palace, Kyoto, Japan)

Crown Prince Torahito picked up a picture of the monstrosity that had been isolated from the video footage. "It blends styles, part armor of our ancestry, part defense of Europe, weapons of the modern era, swords of ancient times, and spellcraft of the divine. Tell me, High Priestess, is this something we have awoken, or is this a transient threat?"

It was several seconds before the High Priestess answered. "Do not know, Highness. Only recently has this threat shown itself, and that without explanation at any length."

"Then speak to me what you do know, if you are allowed?" Torahito asked of the older and highly-regarded High Priestess.

"Do not know to what classification this demon is, initially believed to be of a Kitsune type on the use of fire spellcraft, but last night is proof it is capable of many feats of spell."

"Air, lightning, darkness, and fire," Torahito said solemnly. He had personally replayed the battle footage a dozen times and had copies burned off for records. If anything, the samurai-trained Crown Prince saw no apparent weakness the enemy had that his armor did not compensate for, or that his spellcraft could not destroy at range. "Demons are specialists in a particular subset, though higher-ranking ones may branch out, if I remember my old tales correctly."

"_Hai, sensei_," the High Priestess noted.

Three knocks at the door to Torahito's study signaled that someone was requesting entry. The door guards would prevent that, of course, unless the Crown Prince allowed the entrant. "Who is?"

The Master Sergeant of his guard detail cracked the door partially. "Highness, I have a Shrine Maiden Specialist here with new intel on the event in Sao Paulo," he said.

"Send her in," Torahito ordered.

The Shrine Maiden was not one to move slowly, though even with only two seconds clear view Torahito could tell a lot. She was young, probably early twenties, well-mannered and well-outfitted, and carried a pair of short blades on her person. The view ended when she stopped to the left of the High Priestess and slightly behind, then took to knees and bowed properly to a member of the Royal Family.

"Highness, I bring new information from the events in Sao Paulo."

"Speak candidly, Shrine Maiden Specialist," Torahito ordered. "You were sent for a reason, and I have need of information. Do not restrain yourself in your duty, even if I am royalty."

"_Hai, sensei_," she answered. "These are pictures and copies of a magic sigil found on the pavement nearby the chemical weapons canisters." Each received a color picture of the spray-painted rune and a perfectly-mapped artist rendition of it on a half-meter piece of folded paper.

"These runes...I do not recognize them," Torahito admitted candidly. "Is this your area of specialty, Shrine Maiden?"

"_Hai_, Prince Torahito," the Shrine Maiden nodded. "The rune itself is unseen anywhere in records, but the glyphs inside it are known. Norse runes, Highness, and arrayed specifically to invoke healing skills and magicks, to draw upon power from the planet itself and disperse with the winds and rains. The critical runes are the combination Isa and Jera Runes, here," and the Specialist pointed them out on the sheet of paper, "to prevent untoward things and to bring about change, a necessity of healing and centrality."

"Wait, healing?" Torahito asked with a complete lack of decorum.

"_Hai_, this is a large healing rune, sir," the Specialist answered. "When paired with a necessary spell, this rune has the power to heal very large areas. Nobody was around to see it, but my best estimation is the 'demon' put down this rune and used a spell that caused a rain and fog effect of counter-poison gas — a large cloud of magical antidote — to counter the chemical weapon."

"You are certain of this?" Torahito asked.

"It is my best guess, Highness. Also, I did some analysis of the casualties caused by the chemical attack, and came up with this," she produced a map of Sao Paulo with three concentric circles drawn on it; the center circle was red, the middle circle was green, and the outer circle was red again. "The black dot at the center was the drop point for the chemical weapons. The red circle around it was lethal — just about everyone found within was dead. Starting at this green boundary and moving out, the chemical weapon rapidly lost effectiveness, to the point of zero casualties here in the center of the stripe."

"Powerful magic, indeed," the High Priestess noted.

"The magic lost its effectiveness toward the edge here, though, and some more chemical casualties were reported outside the magic's area of effect."

"I don't have those numbers. How many?" Torahito asked.

"22,131," the Specialist answered calmly. "The...the demon was in the center of the attack, and was completely unaffected."

"All those dead, and nothing to show for it except a spray-painted rune on the ground in Sao Paulo and a platoon of armor destroyed north of the city," Torahito groused. "I fear we have awakened not a demon, but the servant of a God or Goddess, and we shall have no recourse against it."

"Three goddesses, actually, Highness," the Specialist noted.

"How so?" the Crown Prince asked.

"What he said at the end of the battle. 'I am Eric Atrebas, commissioned spellcraft operator to the Fates,' as he said. If he is a commissioned Spellcraft Operator, and he answers to the Fates, then it is the Fates that are his patrons. Urd, Skuld, Verthandi, the Norns of old Norse legend, and my specialty is the Norse," the Shrine Maiden Specialist said.

"I have heard the names in passing," Torahito noted. "They are important figures?"

"They are the beings that write the tales of the past, the present, and the future. If he is subordinate to them, he is here for a very important purpose and they have given him everything he needs to do that job. They will know with absolute certainty what he must do to achieve his goals and he will know that course," she overestimated their level of involvement in Eric's actions.

"I will need to know more," Torahito said. "What is your name, Specialist?"

That question took her aback. "My name, Highness? Hotaru Ichida, _sensei_," she replied after recovering from the shock of it.

"Hotaru-san, if I expect to salvage this nightmare, I will need information and expert analysis. Since it appears we are facing a servant of the Norse Gods, you are probably the best in line for intel analysis. I want you to study this matter fully; every action he takes, every spell he uses, every word he utters, every move he makes. Twice a week, I want updates with full analysis and briefing material. My secretary will be in touch with you routinely to schedule the briefings. Can you do this?"

"_Hai, sensei_," she replied evenly.

"In what fashion we survive depends on how we manage and conclude this crisis, Hotaru-san. Give me your best, and I shall act upon it."

-x-x-x-

(16 August 2041, 1000 Hours)  
(North of Sao Paulo, Southwest of Recanto Tranquilo)

If Eric thought conditions in Sao Paulo could be bad, towns even twenty miles north of the major city were hell on Earth.

On the other hand, navigating the 'shores of hell' (such as they were) was a lot simpler to the Mage than he thought it would be. The Armor he now effectively lived in had an excellent set of pre-loaded maps based on satellite imagery — hyper-accurate pictures of the planet from orbit. Eric figured he had a helluva lot to learn on that note, but so far he had no qualms with the accuracy of the maps. He could even use them to avoid populated centers and therefore also avoid any entanglements with the IJA or Nazis.

The wreckage of a platoon of IJA armor was now some fifteen miles behind him, though the memory of that action slightly more than half a day ago was still fresh in his mind. It was a statement, the manner of statement usually made to instill panic and fear into a foe. From what he was hearing on the radios, the desired effect was definitely achieved. Every civilian radio network was posting rumors of his movements that were wildly off the mark, and for people to avoid the area or evacuate it. Of course, Eric figured that if anyone actually saw and recognized him on the move, he would probably be hearing about it in one fashion or another...before someone shot at him.

There was a mild bit of humor to the march north, though. August was the dead of winter in Brazil, a far cry from the north lands Eric had occupied in years past. The whole concept of planetary physics, orbits, rotations, and seasonal shifts was a whole new and unknown set of concepts to the Mage. On the other hand, he knew well the principle of angular light absorption; the same concepts helped determine crop growth and area temperature, of which he had no problem applying. Still, being winter, the crop fields were barren and snowed on, with the trees bare of leaves. There was nothing in terms of cover or concealment to prevent anyone seeing Eric on the march.

The caveat being, of course, if anyone actually recognized Eric's armor on the march.

A large cow pasture bordered a section of forest to the south, and bordered the urban grounds of Recanto Tranquilo to the west. The cows themselves were more or less unimpressed with Eric marching through their area; if anything, a few of the cows watched him and a calf cleared away from him but otherwise nary a sound from them. Four hundred yards from edge of forest to edge of forest, and Eric was once again concealed as he marched.

Eric considered that the density of trees was impressive for such a massively-populated planet. Sao Paulo had more people within than Eric saw in his entire lifetime prior to coming to this planet. Of course, it was not the millions in the city to the south that was his problem, but the rural residents that became the problem for the day.

Even with the sound of his armor on the move, the audio sensors in his armor were able to pick up the hushed whispers of someone nearby. After Eric stopped nearby and looked in the general direction of the whispers, the speakers revealed themselves — by falling out from behind a tree and landing in a dog-pile not five yards away from the Old Mage.

"Hmm, kids," Eric groused.

"Oh wow, it's the real thing!" The youngest of the kids half-shouted.

"Don't hurt us!" one of the two girls in the pile pleaded.

"Worry not, I have no intention of harming children," Eric answered calmly.

"Children? I'm freaking seventeen!" the first person to standing said with a wild gesture. "How old are you, tough guy?"

"Too old to be young and vital, too young to be elderly and wise," Eric answered cryptically. "At seventeen, I would have been a mercenary swordsman, at sixteen I was exiled for being too good with this blade," Eric drew his Gladius a length to demonstrate. Several of the younger teens showed surprise, but none made a move. "Do you just talk of your age, or do you intend to do something with it?"

"What, you challenging me, tough guy? Think I'm afraid of that armor and shit?" the teenage tough guy asked.

"I do not think I see fear," Eric noted. "I believe I see a young scrapper without a purpose to his blade, nothing more, nothing less."

"What? No purpose? What does that matter?" Again with the wild gesturing; Eric decided it was his affectation for intimidation among the other teens.

"What does your actions matter if you have no purpose, no aim?" Eric looked amongst the other teens, and saw the makings of something he didn't like to see. "Or is this group your aim and nothing more?"

"This is all I have! All we have! Us!" He tried shoving the monstrous armored infantryman in front of himself, but the teen could not make the four tons of armor and shield budge notably. "Ow! What the hell?"

"You have more," Eric commented pensively. "Your attitude is a start but it is also your greatest enemy. I have seen such arrogance; it kills when used improperly. Yes, I think you are capable of far more than you allow of yourself. I think you all are capable of more, I can see it in your eyes."

"Yeah, what about it?" the lead asked.

"What say you to turning in those gang colors for the banner of a soldier?" Eric asked bluntly.

"What? This is my family! No way I would abandon them!" Again, he tried pushing on Eric's armor, but achieved nothing.

"I did not imply abandoning anyone," Eric answered curtly. He reached in behind his shield and drew out a knife, one of the knives he recovered from the Los Lobos gang he struck down just prior to meeting Tabitha and Vladimir. When the provocateur did not flinch, Eric figured he was talking to the right sort of person. "How big do you think your cluster is?"

"Big enough," he answered immediately.

Eric chuckled grimly before he reversed the knife to present it to the challenger. "I took this knife from the hand of a _Los Lobos_ gang member who was about to commit abuse on an orphaned teen lady."

"That's fucking sick, no way I would do that," the challenger answered after a second to understand.

"Prove it, I daresay. Take this knife to your local rebel recruiter when possible. You will know family, brotherhood, when you know what it is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in combat against superior foes. Do you accept this challenge?"

Eric expected hesitation, so the wait was not incongruous to the Old Mage. "You guys in?" the lead asked the others.

"I am," the elder of the two ladies noted. The others nodded their heads in answer.

"I accept your challenge, old wizard dude," the ruffian took the knife. "One day, I'll enchant this thing and use it on you, just to prove I can."

"If you gain those skills, feel free to try," Eric answered readily. "I will listen for word of your exploits, now I must be off to my pickup location. Skill and honor, kids. See you on the battlefield."

Eric resumed his march north toward the next major road and a pickup at that location. His armor needed a recharge and he could certainly stand a good meal, but so far all was going well. There still was no sign of Nazi patrol or IJA reconnaissance, two things Eric was heartily worried about given his past transgressions against their ranks.

Five paces beyond, he was stopped by a simple question. "Mister Atrebas, are you really a servant of the Old Gods?" the younger of the two ladies asked innocently.

"Yes and no," Eric answered after he stopped. "The Norns are considered divine beings, but they are not considered Goddesses in the classic sense. They are something else entirely, and altogether more frightening than even the mightiest of God or Goddess. That is who I am commissioned to."

Eric turned north again and resumed his march. Behind him, six persons resolved to find themselves a proper family, one such as Eric was building. He figured he would never see that knife again, though he would be proven wrong many years into the future.

-x-x-x-

(17 August 2041, 1530 Hours)  
(Tokyo Central High School, Tokyo, Japan)

"This is unreal," the teen holding the tablet said.

"Unreal, no, very real and very frightening," Tatsu voiced his own opinion on the matter.

A second pair of rebel armored infantry had been seen in combat, this time in support of a much larger group of twenty unarmored rebels. They had stormed a firebase in the dead of night and hit the facility at its most vulnerable, when most of the troop was asleep. What little video survived the engagement was of troops firing on the armored monstrosities and achieving nothing more than to create sparks on the shields of the enemy. Unfortunately, the artillery was sited incorrectly to take direct fire shots at the oncoming enemy until after the rebels had gunned down the cannon crews.

The kicker had been added to the news article as an afterthought. Trucks had been stolen, artillery cannons had been stolen, and even the firebase SAM system had been removed from the facility — after it was used to shoot down a response team from the IJA Sao Paulo garrison, that is. What the rebels intended to do with towed artillery pieces and SAM systems, not even the most imaginative military analyst could answer. They all concluded the equipment would be recovered within the week and the rebels would be fertilizer in the same timeframe. Somehow, the four students thought otherwise.

"That armor, kinda makes me think Starship Troopers meets the Roman Legion with a Japanese blacksmith along for good measure," Sosuke commented on the heels of his good friend.

"Why the shield? So freaking tasteless," Manami said before she suspended the video on the tablet she was holding.

"We don't believe in shields," Sosuke answered after considering it. "Fear of death and all that. I don't think these guys are afraid of death, either, they're...I dunno," he faltered after a moment of considering it.

"Out for blood," Hikaru said pensively. "They will take whatever action they have to take to kill the IJA and Nazis. You heard the Mage, he declared himself the reaper of the Nazis and Imperial Army; not somebody who fears death, but someone who wants to excel at delivering it."

"Am thinking there is something more here," Tatsu noted. "These rebels are noisy, especially the ones in the Americas, but this is well out of proportion."

"Desire to play with new toys?" Manami asked her friends.

"No, more than that," Tatsu answered. "This Old Mage, he has some manner of motivation we're not hearing yet."

"Would he tell all? Maybe he is fighting to avenge a lost lover or family member?"

"Ragnarok," Hikaru opined. The way her friends looked at her, she would have elicited the same reaction had she said 'the crayon is purple' with such authority.

"What?"

"No, seriously," Hikaru stammered. "He said, 'I am Eric Atrebas, commissioned spellcraft operator to the Fates,' if I remember correctly. Is that not right?"

Manami fired her tablet back up and replayed the video section of Eric trashing the armor platoon north of Sao Paulo. "You are correct, he said that. What's so special about it?"

"'The Fates' is an an Anglicized name for the Norns, the beings that wrote the history of the world, the present of the world, and the future of the world. If this guy is a disciple to them, he has to be fighting to do something about the Final War — Ragnarok." Hikaru took a moment to breathe steadily after her running monologue.

"Whoa, that's deep," Tatsu said with an air of approval.

"That's psychotic," Manami corrected Tatsu. "What do we have to do with Ragnarok? We don't even believe that waste of stories," she said with the finality of a death sentence.

"I don't know what to believe, but not only does this guy believe it, he's here to fight it," Sosuke cautioned Manami indirectly.

"Okay, if he's here to fight, what, the final war?" Tatsu prompted Hikari.

"Not just the final war, an unwinnable war," Hikaru obliged. "Ragnarok was always supposed to be unwinnable, even the Old Gods would have been killed in it — or, if it is real, shall be killed in it."

"I refuse to believe that," Manami said directly.

"Do you refuse to believe the video? The IJA do some strange false-flag stuff from time to time, but this is just too unreal to be something like that," Tatsu noted, continuing an opinion (Really, a conspiracy theory) that the governments of the world kept the people complacent and distracted by creating mini-conflicts throughout the suborned lands.

"So what? Just because this thing has spellcraft, you think it is real?" Manami asked skeptically.

"Why don't you go ask?" Sosuke replied tartly.

"What? What was that?" Manami rebuffed him.

"Serious," Sosuke matched her icy stare with his own. "He said he won't harm the press unless the press tries harming him, so I'd say he wouldn't harm a student unless you tried."

"No way in a thousand lives am I getting within line of sight to that thing," Manami said with a clear hint of shock to voice.

"What's to fear?" Sosuke needled her. "If it isn't real, why worry about getting close to it? Or is this the point where you finally decide which way you go — is it real or is it not real?"

"You can be a real ass some days, Sosuke," Manami said before she reached across the table and ruffled his hair. "Maybe that's why I like you."

"Thanks," Sosuke said with a smile.

"Get a room," Tatsu said drolly.

"Yes, father," Manami played off his joke. "If this is real, then what? How do you stop something like that?"

"You don't, not really," The School Administrator said coldly from behind them. "Trained for years to fight all manner of enemy, but nowhere in a Nazi or Japanese field manual will you find instructions to fight something like that thing."

"Serious? Not even a theoretical plan?" Tatsu asked.

"No," the Administrator confirmed.

"This is going to be very hard to stop," Hikaru expressed her opinion.

-x-x-x-

(17 August 2041, 2230 Hours)  
(IJA Armor Regiment Bivouac, southeast of Parque das Nações)

Eric had to stay off the radios, stay out of the way of moving vehicles, make very little noise as possible, all due to the sheer audacity of the plan he was about to execute.

An entire Imperial Japanese Armor Regiment rested in the open fields north of the Dom Pedro I road. It was on the move to hopefully 'contain' the Old Mage and hammer him flat. This plan came with the unstated caveat that the IJA believed themselves capable of defeating Eric with armor and heavy infantry. Eric believed otherwise, and he intended to demonstrate that failing forthwith. Wizardry was his stock in trade, modern warfare was his new discipline, and the combination of the two was significant when he demonstrated the raw power on a simple platoon of IJA armor and accompanying infantry.

Of course, an ACR (1) was far larger than a simple Platoon of armor. Eric did not expect any measure of success should he try to directly engage the whole Regiment, nor would he consider seriously such an attempt. On the other hand, if he operated as a support asset to cripple the Regiment, other rebels could come in and finish the detail...

Sentries were out, using night-vision goggles to try and see anything moving around them, but herein Eric's decision to use invisibility to infiltrate the camp was fortuitous. They could see normal movement at night with the goggles, but an invisible object was still invisible even to an enhanced light visual. He could be heard, easily, but not seen; a couple guards had questions about some manner of noise, but they passed it off to the armor moving around in the bivouac.

In his haste to enter the armor park, Eric misgauged the direction a Tank was going to turn and had to jog to get clear of the seventy-ton monstrosity.

"The hell was that?" an IJA Sergeant asked, pointing his rifle directly at Eric.

"I heard it, but I see nothing," one of his subordinates answered.

"I see nothing, Sarge," another infantryman commented.

"Damn, I could have sworn I heard something right there, next to these tanks," the squad lead commented. He walked two meters in front of Eric, but never touched; the Old Mage hoped the sound of his heartbeat would not be audible to the enemy noncommissioned officer. "Forget it. Didn't sound anything like that Kitsune. Squad, resume patrol!"

To better conceal his sound, after the patrol departed the area Eric continued the march between a line of tanks and a line of IFV units, masking his audible presence as something of the armor he was nearby. A mechanic questioned the sound, but after failing to see anything simply resumed his maintenance on the IFV he was repairing.

At the end of the armor row, Eric arrived at the central spot he needed to be at. From here, whatever he did should affect the whole enemy Regiment, as was his intention. He allowed a sentry to pass by before he began the spellcraft with mere minutes remaining on his invisibility.

"_**Sea of waves, sky unhindered, heed the will of those within you. Create constriction upon all beings inside a Paralysis Shell**_," Eric chanted the full-length version of the spell to make sure it was at maximum effect.

The glowing green field emanated from Eric and expanded radially away from him in a shell form. It only took two seconds to reach the maximum extent and fade to nothing, but even that was outside what Eric expected. The field of the shell permeated everything, man and machine, but had no effect on the equipment; one of the tanks on roving patrol would continue to drive south-southwest until it drove into an open-air waste treatment retention pond and became stuck in the muck. The rebels, understandably, did not try to salvage that tank, they simply killed the crew in place and left it sit there.

Even with Eric's power, though, he expected the paralysis would not be total. Roughly seven in eight were affected, which would definitely be enough for the rest of the operation. "This is Atrebas, Green Light is done," Eric said over the radio to the waiting Rebel teams.

"Atrebas, Rebel Zero, roger, we're moving. Results?"

"Somewhere near seven in eight are paralyzed," Eric noted as he walked out into the drive lane to confirm by looking around.

"Roger that. Good show, Old Mage," Tabitha answered from the far side of the radio link.

"Do not kill them all," Eric requested. "It is counter to my purpose here."

"OH SHIT! The Demon is here!" An unparalyzed Mechanic shouted, followed quickly by screaming, wailing, and running northbound away from Eric.

"I am beginning to believe you have that effect on people, Master Atrebas," Tabitha noted with a clear hint of humor to voice.

"So far, nobody is trying to engage me, though a few are running," Eric said with his own hint of humor to voice. "Now to set the mood for the day."

"What are you talking about?" Another Rebel asked on the radio.

"Listen, and ye shall understand," Eric answered while he worked his way through the external speaker system controls by hand gesture translation.

Eric moved north into the encampment slowly, his armor external speakers playing the audio record of the 'common' version of _Phantom Of The Opera_ by Nightwish. Most of those around him were paralyzed or had fled, but nearer the infantry tents he came under fire from assorted resistance. Eric engaged the foes with his assault rifle even as he could begin hearing infantry fire from the south — the rebels advancing into the encampment to capture or kill anyone they could.

His AR magazine ran out four notes into the next song, and given the track title, Eric decided some extended fear factor was in order. _Planet Hell_, also a Nightwish song, echoed between the tanks and the semi-permanent buildings slightly louder than the sounds of Eric's footfalls. The AR went into the back of the shield again, and what came out was his old Gladius — something of a statement to be made to the Imperial Japanese.

"It comes! Stand your ground!" An officer shouted. Eric chopped down the infantryman in front of her by way of decapitation, then took two strides to close the gap with her and ram the IJA _Sho-sa_ (Major) with his shield. A moment after the song began, Eric was confronted with a more familiar threat — a katana in knowing hands, this one held by an enemy _Tai-Sa_ (Colonel).

"Foul demon! I will banish you to the aether where you belong!" The Colonel said after he reset from the failed initial attack.

"If you want my life, come and take it," Eric answered coldly, which somewhat muted the sound of the song while he was speaking.

"_HAI_!" the enemy Colonel screamed as he bolted forward a pace, sword set to come down on Eric's head. A simple move of the shield brought the sword to a grinding halt against the edge of Eric's defensive bulwark, though a return stab was of no use against the faster and savvy Colonel. "Do you fear death, that you must shield yourself, demon?"

"If I die, the Norns will replace me," Eric countered. "I shield myself because someone must stand at guard between the common mass and the nightmare you have become."

The Colonel tested a pair of attacks, swift and accurate, but neither passed Eric's shield. On a third strike, Eric countered by swinging his shield wide, a hard enough strike to dislodge the foe's sword and send it in the direction of the IFVs south of Eric. His own sword came down on the shoulder of the Colonel, though the flat of the blade simply broke the Colonel's collarbone and drove him to his knees.

The blow was stunning, but not fatal. It took him several seconds to regain sense of awareness, but when he did, he realized he had lost. "Why? You could have killed me then and there."

"The first and loudest misconception of this campaign is that I seek to kill," Eric said after he sheathed the Gladius. "Striking down my foes is, by technicality, contrary to my purpose on this planet. I aim to only end the threat, not annihilate it."

"If you do not kill me now, I will keep coming for you, Eric Atrebas," the Colonel said.

"I expect as much," Eric answered with some cheer to voice.

"His sword, Master Atrebas," a Rebel fighter presented it to Eric. Other Rebels had used the battle between Colonel and Mage as distraction to approach and easily disarm / capture the IJA personnel. A few had fought to the end, but most realized they were already surrounded and defeated.

Eric received the sword, and promptly turned it around to the Colonel. "I expect a rematch, Colonel. There are orders of Shrine Maiden that are versed in proper techniques of magic; I suggest you seek contact and study with them, should you expect to challenge me on a more leveled battlefield in the future."

"What?" the Colonel asked. He understood what Eric said, but not why he said it.

"Take your men and go, Colonel. This battle is over. I will await a rematch on another battlefield." Eric turned to the Rebels around them. "Resistance! These men are to be granted safe conduct from the area, so long as they do nothing untoward to our ranks! Is this clear?"

"Yes SIR!" A dozen voices chanted in unison.

Such was the most frightening of sounds to the Colonel, and Eric could recognize it in his eyes. The Imperial Japanese Officer knew he was staring at the one man in Existence that ran a good chance of uniting the rebellion into a systematic force, and capturing an Imperial Japanese ACR mostly intact was a good start for that united front.

-x-x-x-

(18 August 2041, 1030 Hours)  
(SS Military Hospital, Brasila, Brazil)

When Hitomi arrived at an IJA barracks in Sao Paulo northeast, she immediately went into decontamination and medical observation. Once she was cleared as stable, she was medevac transported to Brasila and the large SS Hospital therein. Thankfully, the hospital was not far from the airport; the large amount of transport in one day was more disruptive than the aftermath of the chemical attack.

A full day in observation was enough to clear Hitomi; there was no major damage to be seen from her escapade that close to the contaminated area. Without any major problems, Hitomi was released to her own devices, given she did not fall under SS command. Thankfully, Keiko had been informed that Hitomi was safe and sound in Brasila, so she brought up a set of clothes for the junior specialist Miko.

"How close were you to the canisters?" Keiko asked.

"About a block away," Hitomi noted while she adjusted her bra to a proper fit. "Didn't even know it was coming."

"Someone should have messaged you," Keiko noted. "Damn good you survived."

"I was messaged, but I had to turn the tone off to avoid being heard by that damned wizard," Hitomi noted. She hesitated while she fitted and tied off her robe top (_Kimono_), but was clearly not done. "I checked my message only after the encounter."

"I read that," Keiko noted. Technically, she had supervisory oversight on the Miko involved in this incident, which meant all paperwork funneled through her eventually. "Our foe has a lot more humanity than I would have credited him with a week ago."

"Him? So, you have finally abandoned the investigation positions?" Hitomi asked.

"It's fairly obvious this isn't a simple fox-demon. He's a servant of the Gods, the Norns to be exact. We're on a whole new level here, and it's even worse than our training on facing down demons."

"So, what's the latest news?" Hitomi asked after she tied off her skirt (_Hakama_) and checked her appearance in the mirror. "I hate hospital robes."

"You spend a lot of time in the hospital, but I'm not seeing that gash on your right shoulder from our last misadventure." A sword from a psycho that was imitating a demon had left her right shoulder unusable for six months. Hitomi had put paid to her target in that case, but she thought that scar was forever. Apparently, such an injury was partially by the Mages' spellcraft.

"It's still there, but a lot harder to see now," Hitomi said.

"What's your opinion?" Keiko asked.

"I don't know yet," the junior Shrine Maiden conceded, though Keiko could tell that she meant she was not ready to tell yet, not that she did not have an opinion. "I am ready to go," she noted after she fitted the aluminum ring from the Mage onto her middle finger.

"What is that ring?" Keiko asked.

"Found it on the ground nearby where I collapsed. Think I shall keep it as a reminder how close I came to failure," Hitomi noted before she braced and set her sword at the proper angle for a draw. "After you, milady Yamamoto," Hitomi gestured to the door.

The only thing they had to stop for on the way out of the hospital was some paperwork for Hitomi and to sign out officially. Neither was an issue — both Shrine Maidens knew the value of the phrase '_alles in ordnung_' — and they were out in fresh air outside the hospital.

"You are all right?" Keiko asked sincerely.

"No, not really," Hitomi admitted after thirty seconds of walking. "I was almost killed in a chemical attack that singularly failed to kill any of the rebels targeted, and certainly didn't affect the Sorcerer. I don't feel right about it, even if it is duty."

"Read," Keiko handed her a portfolio of documents, and steered the junior Shrine Maiden around several obstacles while she read.

"This...this is starting to make a strange sort of sense," Hitomi noted. "If he was out for blood, he wouldn't have used that healing spell. Then he tells a Colonel that killing people is actually contrary to his purpose. Something is not adding up here, once you consider what we believed of him before that fateful incident."

"Might he be lying?" the elder Shrine Maiden asked.

"Unlikely," Hitomi judged. "He knows I shall be a pain in his ass for battles to come, and he could easily have let the blister agent kill me right then and there. He chose to save me directly, for some reason, and even restrained his comrades from dropping me. Every one of them was armed heavily; it would have been a one-sided slaughter if he did not stand between them and me."

"An opponent with a sense of honor will be a difficult foe to face," Keiko noted. "Can you still do it?"

"I must do it," Hitomi answered immediately. _I must know what this madman with the spellbooks intends, his lack of a clear goal is driving me insane_, she thought but did not say. "I will do it," she concluded after another hundred paces of march.

"You will need to do it," Keiko noted. "The present thinking in the IJA is there shall be no conventional method of killing this threat. Now, can you continue to turn your sword against someone who saved your life?"

"I don't have a choice," Hitomi said before she stopped in front of a fountain. Keiko stopped a pace beyond and turned to look back. "He may be an honorable foe, but I must know why he saved me. Even if I must beat that information out of him, I want it. Of course, while I am at it, ending the threat would be proper; if we did not, it would be the end of our way."

-x-x-x-

(20 August 2041, 1330 Hours)  
(Serrana, Brazil)

390 kilometers north of Sao Paulo, the Rebel forces of the Sao Paulo District decided it was time to make a very loud and nasty statement for the entire world to see.

It had surprised some, but not Eric, that a mere five days of scattered and otherwise insignificant actions were beginning to have a noted effect on the Imperial Japanese and Nazi occupations of the bulk of the world. The result so far was not enough to completely compromise the enemy, but they were not insignificant; rebels the world over were trying to outdo the 'newcomer' 'Sorcerer' in effect on the Imperial Japanese and Nazis, though no notable results were to be had as of yet.

Eric agreed it was now time to up the ante. A direct, daylight assault on the Nazis was now in order, and the rebels considered they had a nice, fat, under-guarded target at the ready for it. A Nazi SS barracks facility in the town of Serrana, staffed by three platoons of incompetent jackwagons of the SS, and the Rebels wanted to make some noise whacking these tangos. So, Eric and crew had been called in to provide the initial thrust in an area that tanks would have been a poor choice.

"Ever consider this might be a good use for Infantry Armor?" Tabitha asked Eric.

"The initial attack?" Eric asked in counter. "I have dreamed of it, the use of this armor on my battlefields of the past. How I could have rewritten the entire flow of battle with a mere three of these suits at the worst, and one suit in most cases! Still and all, such actions would not make a difference in my needs today; the Nazis beckon, not the Greek phalanx of years past."

"Every time I hear you speak like that, it reminds me why I knew there was something horribly right about you," Katy Hoyos (one of the prototype Armor Testers) noted with a clear smile from her position farther back on the flatbed.

"Much as I expected, opinions are heading in the right direction," Eric noted with a clear hint of humor to voice. "Yet, my purpose is not to induce horror and fright in allies; it is but to end the hostility."

"In bed," Carlos Sandeira tacked on for a few suppressed giggles.

"Leave it to The Machete to think about sex at a time like this," Tabitha groused.

"Erm, Tabitha, everyone on this flatbed is feeling a bit over the top," Kari Porom noted. Given her status at the unit's lady telepath, Eric figured it perfectly reasonable that she would know who was thinking perverse at this time.

"It is a natural side effect of the will to combat," Eric noted. "In Durgan, we came to understand the principle that fighting drives one's mind to thoughts about perversion and love; we even built beliefs about it, victory on the battlefield being only possible by many smaller victories at home. Few Durgan soldiers were unmarried." (2)

"Two turns!" The driver shouted back onto the flatbed. He was easily heard even over the noisy vehicle frame and through the tarps covering the Armored Infantry.

"Game time, boys and girls," Vladimir Pevlekov said wholeheartedly.

Eric drew his Gladius, a weapon that was becoming infamous around the planet for the user thereof. "My sword, for all Existence," Eric declared after the vehicle made the first of the last two turns.

Nine other blades of varying sizes were drawn. "My sword, in eternal defense," Allie Brannoch (another Armor Tester) and his disciple Anita answered the traditional challenge of Durgan.

The vehicle made the last turn, drove fifty meters, and stopped. The driver gave the expected signal of two thumps on the side of the cab, which signaled the operation to begin. "ATTACK!" Tabitha shouted.

As Eric lifted the shroud concealing his armored form, he initiated play on his external audio once more, this time to a different song for the purpose of intimidation, from a different group of music altogether. The open strains of _Ride of The Valkyries_ (Wagner) assailed the enemy barracks as the ten Armored Infantry jumped clear of the flatbed right next to the barracks.

The front doors of the barracks were nothing more than exterior wood doors; for the Armored Mage, ramming through them by shield was simple motion and inertia physics in play. "We are rebels! Surrender your arms!" Eric shouted just before the true refrain of the song began in earnest.

"Prepare to die, Nazi scum!" Vladimir Pevlekov shouted in discord with Eric's declaration.

"Brown Underwear inspectorate!" Carlos 'The Machete' Sandeira declared after he entered the sundered doors. Ironically, the joker of the unit was the first to be shot at, though four pistol rounds did not stop his machete from chopping down the Sergeant-At-Arms of the garrison.

Eric drew second blood on what he considered could have been a walking recruiting poster for the _Sturmtruppen_. A makeshift club was an altogether poor choice against a heavy-armor target, even when wielded by a 7-foot-tall walking Teutonic intimidation machine, and an even less attractive weapon against a Gladius. Club met shield; sword met club and chopped it down by four parts of five of its length and removed part of the soldier's hand. On the return slash from left to right, Eric was able to bring the blade across his midriff in a severe gouge, though the fatal blow would be the third strike thrust to the chest, with two inches of blade visible out his back.

"ACHTUNG! THE ENEMY!" Someone shouted.

"I said surrender your arms! Do not make me slay you!" Eric ordered.

"The Demon! It's here!" Eric received a face full of shotgun blast for his effort at trying to avoid killing them; thankfully, the armored visor (with heavy enchantments) was unscratched by the 10-gauge shotgun pellets.

Of all weapons, Eric had not thus far encountered a pump-action shotgun, but the process of using it was nothing major. Fire, pump, sight, fire, repeat until empty or no targets remain, so far as he could tell. A second shot also struck his helm, but the third shot went wild as Eric deflected the barrel with the edge of his shield. Though not really an intended use of the armor, a simple face-punch was enough to knock the trooper with the shotgun out; it would be later discovered that the strike also caused a major concussion and minor permanent brain damage.

Recovering the shotgun was not as easy as it seemed; greater threats abounded, enough threat that Eric stabbed his sword into the back of a couch and drew the pistol (A 1911A1 that migrated south from America) to drop two troopers with antitank rockets. Inside the confines of a building, striking a man-size target with the pistol was no challenge whatsoever; two shots, adjust, two more shots, two dead _Sturmtruppen_.

"Carlos! Guard left!" Eric shouted as a third Nazi armed a Panzerfaust and aimed at The Machete. Eric tried to race the Nazi in getting on target, but Carlos lost this one; the rocket struck the center of his shield and scorched a four-centimeter ragged hole in it, but much as intended the shield prevented the rocket from penetrating the all-important personal armor.

"Holy shit!" Tabitha shouted after she saw what had become of Carlos' shield and the artwork he had on it. The Nazi was effectively an afterthought, though Eric did make sure to drop three rounds into him and eject the magazine. Reloading, since his left arm was tied up on the shield, involved holstering, putting in a new magazine, and then resuming his pistol (since there was still a round in the chamber).

"I'm alive! I think," Carlos said.

"More coming down the stairs!" Vladimir warned the other assaulters even as he brought a machine gun to bear on them. Given the few remaining Nazis on the first floor had surrendered, Eric turned his newfound shotgun toward the oncoming threat. One shot, one pump, one shot, combined with a couple short bursts from Anita and Vladimir, left nobody on the stairs that could pose a threat.

"Stairs cleared, heh," Carlos noted well after the fact.

"I think I like this weapon. I'll keep it, rather handy for clearing structures." Eric admitted.

"Shotguns are a preferred weapon for close-quarters room-to-room battles," Vladimir noted to Eric. "They throw up a solid wall of projectiles that tears people up in close."

"Who goes first up the stairs?" Carlos asked after a moment of considering their present predicament.

"My armor is best suited for it. I shall handle this," Eric said as he approached the stairs cautiously, this time with assault rifle in hand and the shotgun stowed. Removing the bodies of the wounded and slain was a simple task for the Mage, given the armor increased his strength nearly threefold. Even still, he was subject to harassing fire from submachine guns from the upper level, a not unexpected happening even as he cleared the stairs.

Once cleared, the Old Mage began the trek up the stairs backwards, with his shield facing the open area and likely axis of attack. He made sure to put his feet only on the boards directly above the stair risers, given the mass of his armor (even cut in half with magic) would collapse the stairs if he stepped incorrectly. The fire from the defenders was heavy, with machine guns and assault rifles laying down enough fire that it caused his shield to buck several times.

"ACHTUNG! GRENADE!" one of the soldiers shouted before Eric saw the grenade bounce off his shoulder plate.

"Aww fuck," Eric groused. He knew the grenade could not damage his armor, but—

The blasts barely inched him forward, but a blast from a grenade is an omnidirectional menace. With grenades on the stairs, the blast and fragmentation damaged the risers below the grenades and further damaged the floor below the stairs. Less than a second after the blasts, Eric dropped through the stairs, through the floor below the stairs, and dropped a further ten feet onto the poured concrete basement floor.

"Eric! Are you alright?" Tabitha asked in a half-panic.

"I will live," Eric groused, laying on his back and looking up through two holes to the roof and the second floor occupants. They had come forth to look at their efforts, cheering and shaking their fists at the Armored Mage two stories below them, though their celebration was short lived when Eric shredded the head of one of his taunters by way of a three-round burst of 7.92 JS Mauser. "Lousy bastards. They got me pretty good on that one, should have seen it coming." Eric could not help but recognize the giggling of Kari, Anita, Nicole, Carlos, and even Vladimir.

"Now what?" Allie Brannoch asked. "No stairs, no access, no dice."

"We bring them to us," Pevlekov said after his giggling fit was done. "Sir Mage, can you pass me one of your magicked swords?"

"I discern what you intend, Vladimir," Eric said in a more formalized fashion after he stood up. "Be wary you do not bring the whole building down, or I will have plenty of company down here in the basement — unwillingly." Even despite his reservations, Eric provided Vladimir with his first relic sword, the one that glowed lime green when outside the sheath.

Vladimir took the sword, chopped through the support beam that held up part of the upper floors, and jumped up to grab a hold on the beam and hopefully wrench it down with his weight. Carlos joined the effort, but only after Anita joined the fray did they get results.

Eric was unsurprised to be joined in the basement by a couple tons of debris, four more Armored Infantry, and half a platoon of Nazis. It would take a crane and four hours effort to hoist free the Armored Infantry, since there was no stairs access to the basement capable of holding the massive Infantry Armor.

Needless to say, at the threat of bringing the rest of the building down, the remainder of the Nazis surrendered without incident.

-x-x-x-

(22 August 2041, 0800 Hours)  
(IJA Shrine Priestess Headquarters South America, Caracas, Venezuela)

"Order, please, order," the South American Head Priestess noted. "For those of you new to the region, I welcome you to South America. I am Mei Matsushita, regional head priestess, so if you have any questions, concerns, needs, feel free to ask."

"_Hai_, thank you, _sempai_," one of the new faces answered, and others nodded their appreciation.

"This briefing is a major one — what we are about to do will be significant, so I implore you all to pay attention. We are pretty much guaranteed that some of us will not make it back from this assignment, but we are the only force capable of facing this opponent on equal terms."

"The demon," one of the older hands noted.

"Correct and not," Mei noted. "I will leave the rundown on this foe to a veteran of multiple engagements with the enemy, Hitomi Takamachi, a specialist in anti-demon operations."

After Mei surrendered the lectern to Hitomi, the veteran hesitated a moment to look over the gaggle of Shrine Maidens. "Listen well, for you are about to face a nightmare not of common demons, but of old legends. First, let us dispense with the name demon; this is no _Inari_, _Kitsune_, or _Onmyouji_, this is a human wearing a hybrid technological and magical armor straight out of the nightmares of fiction authors. This human, in addition to having impressive weapons and armor, is also a highly skilled wizard and something of a tactical or strategic genius, with an instinctive understanding of how to do battle that is reminiscent of the Samurai. Now, with the battle in Serrana as evidence, he is branching out into technologic pursuits of a terrifying nature. All in all, we are going to face off against a true balanced warrior, who holds skill in every major discipline and even some we have never considered before."

"Using an assault rifle is not a discipline, it's common infantry stuff," a more-arrogant-than-average Miko noted.

"Are you capable of defending against an assault rifle with spellcraft or equipment?" Hitomi asked directly. The Miko did not respond for ten seconds, so Hitomi renewed the question. "Well? Can you?"

"No, _Sempai_," she answered after a few more seconds of hesitation.

"This is the second mental barrier that must be passed by us all if we expect victory. First, this is no demon. Second, this is not a single-style battle. He has been seen to do battle with sword; where that was inefficient, he changed to firearms. Where the guns he carried failed or were empty, he turned to spellcraft. When someone pressed him in close while using spells, he turned to physical combat or blade combat. When combat lulled, he took time to reload weapons and prepare new spells, or moved to an advantageous position. You are not facing a demon, you are facing a soldier that fights nastier than a demon. If you cannot grasp this concept, I recommend you leave this room immediately and remove yourself from this operation."

In thirty seconds, three of the Miko stood and bowed out of the room. Hitomi did not blame them in the slightest; she had just laid out the groundwork of what was effectively an unwinnable conventional battle. She did not believe him completely undefeatable, given he was still a human inside the armor of technology and magic. The question that would have to be asked multiple times would be what manner of engagement would have to be run against him to catch the wizard off-balance.

"Do not think lesser of those who left, for in any conventional term this is an unwinnable battle," Hitomi declared her thoughts on the matter. "The Imperial Japanese Army called upon us because we need to engage in an unconventional campaign against this nightmare. We must hit him, hard, repeatedly, test for limitations, test for weaknesses, test for exploitable patterns, test all of our techniques in the hope that something can defeat him. What he said at the end of the discussion with the reporter, that was no arrogant boast. As it stands right now, we have to find something that can defeat him, because ready assumption is no conventional or special weapon will do the job."

"How many of us will it take to do this? Shrine Maidens aren't as prolific as Infantry, after all," A senior healer Shrine Maiden noted.

"It will take as many of us as it takes," Hitomi declared coldly. "As the old logic paradigm suggests, this is a two-choice solution set: either we find a way to win, or there will be no Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany some time in the future."

"Are your prior defeats at his hands clouding your judgment?" the same arrogant shrine maiden asked in semi-taunt.

Hitomi considered the question, and multiple possible responses. After several seconds, she decided the direct approach was in order. "No," she began, then hesitated. "No, my judgment is sound, as is my memory of those battles. This wizard is extremely powerful, as is demonstrated with his ability to destroy tanks outright using spellcraft, a feat most _Kitsune_ would not be able to match. When I engaged him close with my sword, I got inside his power aura, and I could sense his entire being. He has not cut loose yet; I have reason to suspect he has far more power available than he has shown so far, and you all heard his claim that he has millions of spells at his disposal."

That much of a declaration caught the attention of everyone in the room. "How — who — why?"

"The 'why', we do not know yet. Personally, his actions make no sense to me, and I want to know why he is doing this. The 'who' is simple, he has already told us he is a commissioned spellcraft operator to the Norns, and if this is true that means the 'how' is also simple. Train under a Goddess for spellcraft, you become powerful quickly if you have the aptitude."

"That is...frightening," a different demon hunter Miko requested.

"We are past 'frightening' here. Demons are one thing; dealing with the servants and operators of a Goddess is a whole new level," Hitomi finally put voice to the internal thought she had been holding out for some time. "That is my part of the briefing. Matsushita-san, anything else I should cover?"

"No, we will go over everything else in the next few days, before we begin operation planning," Mei answered.

-x-x-x-

(24 August 2041, 2255 Hours)  
(Ituverava, Brazil, 20°20'5.28"S / 47°48'20.17"W)

Southwest of Ituverava, a circle exchange road system gave Eric a lesson in high-speed and high-volume automotive traffic handling. Vehicles, when approaching the interchange, had three options. They could remain on the primary road, they could exit the road on the interchange and take a secondary road away from the highway, or they could take the interchange circle around and loop back headed the opposite direction to re-enter the highway. He had intended to take a break in this vicinity, but the traffic circle had become an educational experience in the necessities of mobility.

Of course, even the simple interchange brought extra opportunity. The sound of a turbine engine was distinctive, and uniquely Japanese when used in vehicle pursuits. Conventional piston-style engines ruled the day in civilian vehicle markets; the Japanese were concerned with performance, and were willing to use fuel at a more prodigious rate to achieve it. Thus, Eric could hear their vehicles coming over a mile away.

"Armor, activate night vision," Eric ordered curtly, which changed over from unmodified view filters to a heads-up display augmented with green-filter light amplification. He also had the option of using thermal vision augmentation, but he preferred thermal for dealing with infantry and light-amplification for dealing with vehicles.

The vehicles in question were a distance off but rapidly approaching; Eric figured his window for engaging was short, maybe thirty seconds from end to end. That precluded the use of a grenade launcher or assault rifle; Eric reached for the MG '42 and fed it a double-belt of two hundred linked rounds, what he figured would be ample to cripple this convoy and make sure it never reached the intended destination.

Before Eric began the attack, someone did it for him. A pair of Rocket-propelled grenades were loosed from the roof of a building on the northeast corner of the circle exchange; one detonated on the road surface, but the other struck the lead truck and detonated the load bed supplies. Given the random and sparkling manner of the secondary blasts, Eric could not but assume the truck had been carrying ordinance.

Some assault rifles and a machine gun opened up next from the same vicinity, but the truckers knew their duty. They bypassed the destroyed truck, driving through the road median and into the mostly-empty oncoming traffic lane to avoid the blockage. Perversely, this avoidance maneuver made things technically simpler for Eric, since the coming convoy was now nearer and heading effectively straight at him. Eric braced the MG '42 against his shield, cinched the stock in tight against his armored shoulder, and sighted up the new lead truck.

The first burst of machine gun was dead on, drilling fifteen rounds into the driver station including three tracers. The dead driver steered the truck back across the median and shot over the proper lane, down past the southwest edge of the interchange, and into an earthen wall where it stopped. Eric anticipated that result, and when the first truck cleared he immediately targeted the second truck for servicing. Because the driver jerked, Eric ended up using nearly forty rounds on the cab of the second truck, but the result was the same. This truck went right, but rather than rolling on the truck flipped and skidded off to the west of the interchange.

Driver three was inordinately smart about what was happening; given two trucks had gone right, he went left and hammered the gas to clear the impromptu two-phase ambush. The fourth driver did not have fast enough decision-making skills (hence his posting to driver), and blundered right into Eric's killbox. Another burst, another truck with a dead driver.

The last element of the convoy was a single wheeled IFV that had stopped just north of the interchange to engage the rebels that started the party. A laser range estimate showed five hundred yards from his position to theirs, too far for an accurate Panzerfaust shot, so he turned the machine gun on the infantry that were now trying to suppress the rebels. Picking them off from the side was a simple task, and ion less than a hundred rounds he had silenced four of the infantry, but the tracer Eric loaded every fifth round had a side effect he only realized after the fact... (3)

"This is not going to be friendly," Eric complained when he realized the 35mm chaingun was now aiming at him, not the building the rebels had occupied. Just after the first burst passed over his head, Eric was able to stow the MG '42 on its rack on the back of his shield and he braced hard against his shield, expecting the enemy to give him hell.

The first impact of 35mm cannon was only the beginning; for thirty seconds, his shield bucked and shook to the impact of two HE-DP and one HE-Frag round, delivered at a rate of 180 rounds per minute or 3 rounds a second. All told, he received 86 rounds in direct hit against his shield, though the magics applied to it prevented any serious damage to the user inside or the armor itself.

-x-

The cannon was only a distraction, though. The gunner wanted him suppressed while the IFV loader used the manual crank to lock open the anti-tank missile battery on the turret. Normally an IFV crew would simply flip a switch to open up the launchers, but this machine had several mechanical faults and was headed to Brasila for repairs. With the launcher open, the gunner put a targeting laser on the Armored Mage, then triggered one of the missiles.

For 500 meters of flight distance against a comically stationary target, the missile only took three seconds to hit the target. "Waha! Direct hit, Chu-i! He's airborne!" The gunner said.

"Excellent shooting," the vehicle commander said.

"What do — ghuh?" the Gunner looked back to whatever touched him, and saw a teenage lady with an assault rifle to his face. "Oh shit."

"If he is dead, so are you," the lady said. She was not the only rebel in the vehicle, either.

The Gunner noticed movement on his screen, and looked back to it. "Oh dear, that thing is moving again! It doesn't look like I even scratched it!"

"I don't care what those blasted Miko say, this thing is a demon," the vehicle commander said.

"All right, everyone out of the APC," the lady with the assault rifle ordered. "Six, Seven, go assist the Mage!"

-x-

Eric did not know what hit him, given he had hunkered behind his shield, but he had his suspicions that it was an anti-tank guided missile. Tabitha had made mention of certain Japanese Infantry Fighting Vehicles having AT missiles for use in the chance they encountered heavy targets, so Eric considered it possible he had just survived a strike that rightfully should have killed him.

"Mister Mage! Are you alright?" a Rebel rifleman asked in a rush as several ran up on him.

"I will live, but I wish the world would stop spinning at such an alarming rate," Eric groused. He was standing, poorly, and the effects of the hit were such that he had to brace his shield to remain standing. The sheer impact of the hit had been disorienting and dizzying, not to mention the whole tumbling-through-the-air experience that Eric considered himself reticent to repeat.

"Sweet Jesus, dude, you just took an anti-tank missile in the face and lived to talk about it!" Eric could not place the accent or the unusual speech patterns of the rebel, but he could tell he was not a Brazilian native.

"Being struck in that fashion may not be dying, but it is a manner of living I am in no rush to repeat," Eric admitted. "Okay, I think I will live, and my armor is designed to regenerate damage to the user over time, so I will live to fight again."

"That is totally badass," the not-quite-Brazilian rebel said. "Come on, the boss wants to talk to you."

Eric followed behind the rebels, who were slightly faster than he was even at a reasonable walking pace. The armor controls were not perfect; physically, Eric was a bit slower in movement than average, but the loss was not so great as to make him vulnerable. Covering the distance from his landing spot to the captured IFV was an affair of a couple minutes' march amidst growing cheers from the rebels.

"He lives! After all that shit!"

"You really are the Demon they are afraid of!"

"Dude, way scarier in person than on television!"

"Enough, you louts! Let the wise man talk!" A teenage lady said with authority. Eric was somewhat surprised to see the Rebel team quiet down on her order, though he figured there had to be a story for a Rebel Cell to be commanded by a rather aggressive teenage lady.

Still, Eric could not help but chuckle at her assumption. "Being a wizard is not a factor of wisdom, believe me," Eric noted. "I trained in with some good-hearted idiots in the past; not everyone who can call magicks is possessed of high intelligence or sagely wisdom. Still, you have my thanks for stopping the IFV from continuing its attack. That was not a pleasant experience."

"Forget that, man, thank you for stopping the cargo carriers and chopping up their infantry!" the not-so-Brazilian Rebel said. "That's some serious shit you are wearing. Where can I get a set of that armor?"

"Yeah! Where can we all get a set of that armor?" Another of the rebels asked.

"Hold, before you get the wrong idea on this matter," Eric noted with a raised hand. "The armor is a limited-production run, though we have the designs to build more if we can set up a manufacturing chain," Eric knew that much of their hurried departure from Sao Paulo. "My armor, in particular, is different from the other armor sets. I have fifteen years training and use in wizardry pursuits; the ability to take this kind of abuse is a factor of the spellcraft I have applied to it. Given what just happened, though, it is no panacea for battlefield abuse. What that I had anticipated the missile strike, I would have simply struck the IFV with lightning to end the threat."

"Damn, well, if you do start building them again, I'd like to volunteer for the service," the lady leader noted. "We cannot thank you enough, Master Atrebas. What manner of supply do you require? I give you the honor of first picks."

"I require nothing spectacular," Eric noted. "I have need of three Panzerfaust or similar anti-tank rockets, several days' worth of canned meals, and some bath soaps."

"Bath soaps?" one of the rebels asked, thrown off by the unusual request.

"Aye, bath soaps. I routinely pass clear streams and rivers that I use for bathing, but I ran out of soap two days north of Sao Paulo."

-x-x-x-

(25 August 2041, 0330 Hours)  
(Northwest of Ituverava, 20°14'15.16"S / 47°50'37.78"W)

"Katana Lead, this is Eagle, we have a unknown contact on ground-search radar, possible match to our favorite armored marauding wizard,"

"Eagle, Katana Lead, I have your uplink. Katana is rolling in for a closer look. Katana Element, check in."

"Two, weapons hot."

"Three, standing ready."

"Four, also ready."

"Katana element, snap to heading 1-1-0 and increase altitude to 6-0-hundred meters. If this is the real deal, I do not want to be anywhere near it," Captain Jubei Yuuhara declared with a hint of fear to voice. Nobody listening in on the radio link begrudged him that emotion, given the frightening reputation the rebel Mage had grown.

"_Hai_, _sensei_," Katana 3 replied.

The flight distance to the uplinked target zone was short — they were patrolling this area with a JSTARS (4) ground-search control aircraft to find the bastard and hopefully bomb him off the face of the planet, and they had a general idea where he was going. If one plotted his general trajectory, the march path was likely to terminate somewhere in Venezuela after several thousand miles of hot-footing it.

"Katana Lead, four, I have visual. Confirm this is the target, looks like he is getting ready to enter a wheat field from a nearby cow pasture. Damn thing's a monster, no two ways about it."

"Roger that. Eagle, Katana lead, confirm visual on target Eric Atrebas. What are my orders?"

"Katana Lead, Eagle, you have kill-box authorization. Ordinance release 1500-pound conventional bombs and 2000-pound cluster bombs, cleared hot at your discretion. Engage priority target at first available and egress vicinity vector 0-0-5 to return to base. Eagle, out."

"Katana element, we begin with the cluster bombs. Take it up to 1-0-hundred meters for medium-level bombing."

"Two," "Three," "Four," his flight acknowledged. Moving up to the requested level and around for another pass to the target was a simple maneuver, since they did not expect a Triple-A threat from this target.

"Katana lead, approaching Initial Point. Confirm weapons live and drop when your CCIP computers give you green light."

The other pilots once again acknowledged with only their flight numbers, given they were ten seconds away from their first the mission. Each Mitsubishi Kami-F2 fighter carried for this mission six 1500-pound conventional bombs and four 2000-pound cluster bombs based on the United States Mark-20 Rockeye Cluster Bomb. Across four planes, that amounted to 13,000 per plane and 52,000 pounds of ordinance in the flight, almost enough firepower to tear up a city like the nearby city of Ituverava.

"Three, bombs away!" The one lady in the formation half-shouted; she was only the first in the unit.

-x-

Eric knew the value of reconnaissance from his Durgan days, and specifically was always wary of recon cavalry forces because of their ability to harass light forces or report on movements. He had only one battle where he had a clean shot at recon cavalry, and he did take it — a horseman without a horse is nothing more than poorly trained infantry, all things considered.

The presence of aircraft overhead, he erroneously figured, was recon outside of his ability to reach it. This was one of the major threats he could not vanquish, though he knew aircraft also had lethal purpose.

When the wall of mini-explosions began advancing toward him, he had less than two seconds to react to it. The Old Mage was able to partially shield himself with the heavy shield, but not completely. Most of the pattern exploded harmlessly away from him, but he figured at least fifty, sixty such strikes landed directly on him. More to the point, the fragmentation and explosion of the rounds that landed nearby tore up his non-magicked gear, weapons, supplies, and ammunition. Every one of his firearms and all three of the new LAWS rockets he had acquired were rendered useless by the bomblets.

"Damnable fighter strikes," Eric groused ten seconds after the last of the bomblets blew. "All my gear is damaged," the Mage raged after inspecting what remained of his MG '42, which was not all that much.

Figuring the attack was over, Eric straightened up and continued marching north by northwest, internally convinced the fighters could not hit him again. The first indication something was wrong was the low-pass over his position, followed by a second low-pass a minute later.

On this last pass, there was no advancing wall of mini-explosions to presage the coming nightmare. A single blast front struck the ground nearby, fortunately to his left, where most of the blast and fragmentation impacted his shield and not directly on his armor. In this, the fortuitous design of the tower shield in the same style of the old Roman Legion Scutum protected almost all of the Armored Mage on the rear side of that shield.

The first was a single fighter's complement of conventional bombs, with a hellish explosive force that catapulted the Old Mage southeast toward a thicket of trees nearby the corn fields he was approaching. A second fighter passed overhead thirty seconds later and dropped his bombs, this time a lot closer than the first strike, though the flight distance caused by the strike was not as severe because Eric had not stood up. A third strike found the Mage simply lying on the ground with his shield over his body, making for an easy target; one of the bombs even landed within a meter of the Mage. Eric was unconscious by this third strike, and had no recollection of the fourth bombing run with conventional bombs.

-x-

(1 hour later)

"Watchdog, this is Eagle, what is your status?"

"Eagle, watchdog, we are 45 minutes out from the target zone," the assault team noted.

After the highly successful bombing raid on the Mage, Katana Flight had returned to base while Eagle coordinated some manner of pickup for the now-deceased 'Spellcraft Operator'. Unfortunately, the nearest team available was Watchdog Team, which had initially been gearing up to raid Ituverava and exact some vengeance on the rebels that had struck the transport convoy late the night prior. Eagle had no trouble whatsoever in redirecting Watchdog Team to collect the downed Mage and his frightening armor.

The JSTARS plane had taken to orbiting the site in a racetrack pattern, its cameras and radar firmly fixed on the downed Mage.

One of the few American operations personnel in the IJAF was on Eagle, serving in the humble but critical thermal camera operator role. He was also the least distracted by the chitchat going on around the cabin about how they coordinated the strike that killed the Mage. The American was a fan of zombie movies, and was convinced the only way to kill this thing permanently was to implode its head, so he wanted to make sure it happened.

He also became the first to notice movement in the target zone, so he watched the screen for thirty seconds. "Oh holy shit on a stick," the Thermal Camera Operator bemoaned.

"What?" The operator next to him asked, looking at the American's control panel. "Wha — it cannot be!"

"Captain, Panel eleven," the American said.

"What is it?" the Captain said curtly. He had no issue with the few Americans in the IJAF, since they all seemed to know their place and were not aiming for command positions — yet, he admitted.

"The target is moving again, sir," the Operator noted.

"Erm, what was it you said? Holy shit on a stick, if I heard it correctly?" the Captain asked.

"_Hai_, sir."

"This certainly applies. If he is moving, that means he is awake. If he is awake, he has his spellcraft, and that means Watchdog is heading into a battle scenario from which they cannot win." The Captain reached to the control panel and picked up the radio microphone, then set it to the general ground channel. "Watchdog, Eagle, come in," the Captain requested.

"Eagle, Watchdog, we are still inbound the target zone," the Watchdog commander replied in a frustrated tone. He wanted to get there as well, but the incessant radio calls for updates would not make his formation move faster.

"Watchdog, be advised the target has regained consciousness and is mobile at this time. Recommend you abort mission, after the beating he took he will be in a very foul mood."

"Oh, shit," Watchdog Lead answered. "I roger recommend to abort. We are aborting mission at 0440 hours and returning to base. Watchdog is out."

"Fucking zombie in magical armor, man. At this point, I don't know what it is going to take to kill it," the American whined.

"When you do find out, be sure to tell the rest of us," the Captain noted.

-x-x-x-

(1 September 2041, 1000 Hours)  
(Rebel Safehouse / Routing Facility, Uberlândia, Brazil)

Eric had not made good time during the day that he was subject to airstrike, but he managed to make up for it by teleporting back to the abandoned site of his first public attack on the IJA. Since nobody was looking at an area he had already shot up, he was able to rest in semi-peace while the regenerative enchantments finished undoing the damage to his body from the bombing runs. Another teleport spell that evening and he was back on the march, this time north with a slight tinge of east; he knew the IJAF was flying out of an airport in Brasila, and he figured it was time to make another statement.

Another three days march north led him to the small city of Uberlândia, a rebel stronghold south of Brasila and a city markedly devoid of any notable Nazi or IJA presence. When Eric walked into town alongside the 050 Highway, it was not more than ten minutes before he had an escort of cheering fans and mildly inquisitive kids. Ten minutes later, Eric was on a flatbed truck driven by the rebel cell commander of the town to take him to a safehouse for some much-needed rest and relaxation.

Eric had the last day in August as a day off, which he put to good use revamping his personal medical procedures and doing research for possible anti-aircraft spellcraft — the tale of the bombing raid was horrifying to the rebels, but went a long way to establishing his 'street cred' as the unstoppable Rebel Mage. His other tales of nazi slaying had also been recounted to the Rebels, which only magnified his status. Eric figured he had a long way to go, but the South American rebellion was already starting to look up to him as a specialist — a position he wanted, since it meant he could begin passing his skillset on in earnest, a rite of passage necessary for completing his mission from the Norns.

Inasfar as it counted as rest, Eric also took the time to draw equipment from the Uberlândia rebel supply depot and rebuild his destroyed arsenal — of all the weapons he carried on his armor, only his two magicked broadswords and the magicked katana from Shiori survived. For his personal non-armor equipment, only the Library Plate remained exterior to his armor, as it was attached to the armor in normal configuration to augment his magical skills. His rings remained, and the armor itself was mercifully undamaged, so Eric technically was still in fighting shape even without the revamped weapons.

The first of September was a work day for Eric — though, nothing physical was asked of him. This was all planning, a necessary form of work for coming campaigns to be of any major hope of success.

"This assembly is now in order. First off, introductions are now in order for those of us new to this meeting," There was only one person new to the meeting, and Eric knew it was him.

"Leandra King, Ituverava cell," the same teen that had command of the ambush said. "We have met."

"Julio, Paracatu Liberators, and this is my Ops Officer, Kevin Hunter," Julio jerked his thumb at the guy next to him. Eric figured the man was an American, or a descendant thereof, given the way he appeared and carried himself.

"Former Navy SEAL, United States. A pleasure to meet you, Atrebas," the soldier noted, thereby confirming Eric's estimation.

The next to stand was a tall and stern lady. "Isabella Sanchez, Free Brasila Movement, with Julia Hunos, Operations, and Yvette De Sanchez, Training." Eric could not help but notice the extensive interest from the training officer, but made no direct response to it.

"Charlie Higren, First Cell command, and Miguel Zastava, Ops," Miguel took the time to shake hands with Eric, but Eric noted the other American in the room shied away in a civil fashion.

The last unknown pair stood, and both approached. "Miranda of the Windchimes, and Boris Krenik, Spetsnaz Ops Officer," both shook his hand.

"You worked well with Vladimir Pevlekov; he is an old friend of mine," Boris said.

"I have learned many dirty things from Vladimir," Eric admitted. "And that leaves me. I am Eric Atrebas, Commissioned Spellcraft Operator to the Norms, a Demon to the Nazis and the _Kitsune_ to the Japanese."

"And hot damn have you earned those names," the SEAL noted. "I take it you're going to be in on the next major move?"

"No, he is the next major move," Marcos Julius noted. Eric had learned his position quickly, Marcos was the cell commander for Uberlândia area and a major logistic strategist for the South American rebels. A bare hour of study the day prior had immersed Eric in how important supplies were, especially the supplies Eric had captured over the past week. "Eric, if you would brief the assembly on your plans?"

"Aye," Eric noted. "First, a historical is in order. Six days prior, I assisted Leandra in capturing a supply convoy, though inadvertently. I intended to hit the convoy of my own volition when I heard them coming down the road, it became a team effort when the Rebels hit the first truck before I figured them in range. Once again, thanks to Leandra and her cell for bringing the Infantry Fighting Vehicle under control."

"I still can't believe you survived the anti-tank missile hit," Leandra noted warily.

"That was not the worst part of the day, trust me," Eric said. "Several hours later, I was engaged by a flight of aircraft that dropped bombs on me — a lot of bombs, actually. First with hundreds of small explosions," Eric illustrated his bad morning for the group.

"Cluster bombs, used for wiping clean a large area," the SEAL noted.

"Then with several strikes of far larger and more potent but concentrated blasts," Eric said. "I can clearly remember three individual strikes, though I was knocked unconscious by the third. My systems recorded a fourth strike while I was apparently knocked out."

"Holy shit, dude, that's pretty hard," Charlie Higren noted. "What haven't the Japanese thrown at you yet?"

"I am too far inland for their warships," Eric considered. "I have faced most of their force in piecemeal engagements, notwithstanding the naval forces. And that brings us to the here-and-now, and an intention born of an airstrike. If I was knocked unconscious and mostly disarmed by an airstrike, I can only guess the lethality of their attacks on unprotected persons."

"No joke, that," Julia Hunos replied wholeheartedly.

"On this, I shall make a move of three purposes: one, the dispatching of this highly lethal and fast asset," Eric outlined his first purpose.

"He means kill them, right?" Julio asked after a moment of silence.

"Yes, he does," Boris answered.

"Second, I shall shock the Imperial Japanese by striking their heavily fortified garrison in Brasilia and causing massive casualties," Eric outlined his second purpose.

"Now that's insane. You do realize the Brasilia Garrison is over ten thousand troops?" Isabella asked directly and derisively.

"I was able to hit an entire regiment with a paralysis spell, and rendered disabled seven of eight of their ranks. Done to ten thousand, which is not far off from the five thousand I hit prior, I am considering maybe 1200 remaining threatening."

"Hell, if there is three thousand active, they still can't stop the Mage," Leandra said with a smile. She was easily the youngest person in the room, though Eric figured again she had to be in command for a reason. "They still lose by default."

"So, what's action three, then?" Isabella asked curtly, having been shown up by the teenager in the room.

"Action three is to tear down the flag of the Imperial Japanese Army that flies over the former capital of Brazil," Eric concluded his operational concept.

"What about the statue of Hirohito in the Square?" Julio asked.

"Not my call," Eric answered curtly. "I have no problem attacking an enemy, or attacking destructive and invalid principles, but I shall not attack a history. If you wish to sunder the statue, that is between you and Brasilia. I will not do it readily, but I may do it if asked."

"That makes no sense," Isabella called Eric on it. "Hirohito was the man who started this!"

"And if I destroy a statue of him, will it change the fact that he started it?" Eric asked in calm counter.

"No," Isabella realized what landmine she just stepped on.

"And there is the reason. Never attack history, for you shall lose against a foe you cannot alter. You will only repeat its failings." Eric concluded his lesson for the day. "None of us like the history, but attacking it, burying it, these will not correct the problems. Let it be known far, wide, properly, that further generations shall not repeat these mistakes."

"Erm, sir, have you considered a fourth target in the city?" Miranda asked.

"You have a recommendation?" Eric asked after a moment of considering the map before them.

"You have had trouble with the Japanese Priestesses, the Shrine Maidens, no?" Miranda continued.

"I have," Eric admitted. "Mind, it is not a massive trouble, they have some power but cannot focus it for proper combat purposes."

"The Shrine Maiden South America headquarters is 300 yards north of the Garrison Headquarters. It would be fairly easy for you to strike their base just the same as it would be for you to hit the Infantry to the south of it."

Eric considered the information, the locations and distances, and realized he would engage them whether or not he actually wanted to. As soon as word of his attack came from the airbase, they would be on alert; his actions against the garrison would draw them into what they hoped would be a defensive engagement, and likely into direct engagement against the Armored Mage. It would be messy; Eric had every intention of avoiding a hard engage, but the Miko would do their damndest to put a stop to his new-found crusade. Conflict would ensue.

"I will have to fight them no matter what. Best I be ready for it, I think," Eric considered aloud. "Thank you."

They would continue with the details into the afternoon, but the concept was hashed out here, by one man willing to face the Imperial Japanese head-on. Eric could not help but notice the looks from those around the table, for they were indicative of both his greatest fear and his greatest desire in this campaign.

-x-

(same day, 1600 hours)

After the meeting, Eric had retired to his bunk area for the purpose of resting and practicing spellcraft. Though practicing now was unlikely to make a massive difference in the coming battle for Brasilia, Eric knew that as his infamy grew (and his popularity with the common person grew faster than any press infamy), he figured he would be called on to do more powerful feats of wizardry. Thus, training now would increase output down the line.

The assorted tasks of filling barrels with magically-generated water, then clearing those barrels with magic, as well as other odds and ends (such as levitating a palette of MREs, or generating spirit lights in the warehouse area) were good training — no destruction, nothing that drew major amounts of attention, and somewhat helpful to people working in adverse conditions.

One thing he did not expect was extended attention from one of the Free Brasilia Front persons that had remained after the meeting. It was not surprising to Eric to know that Isabella, the cell commander, was not fond of him in any fashion; much as he figured it, she likely thought he was poaching on her territory with an intent to upstage her band of merry rebels. He also didn't know what the position of the operations officer from that cell was supposed to be; his suspicions, of course, was that she would follow the commander's position.

The training officer, however...

"I had heard the rumors in the weeks before the gas attack," Yvette noted after she leaned against the bedpost of his double-bunk bed. "I wanted to believe, then, but I lost hope when I heard about the gas attack."

Eric could sense where she was going. "Then you saw the attack on the IJA armor platoon," he took the story to its next step.

"I saw that attack, and I saw the Nazis die when you hit that last APC with the old Panzerfaust. The Imperial Japanese died at the end of your speech, when you dared the reporter to find someone capable of stopping you."

"I, alone, am nothing special," Eric admitted. "That speech was an illusion. The more illusions I create, the more illusions shall walk before me wherever I go. That creates fear factor, and breaks the morale of an opponent."

"You really think you're nothing special?" Yvette asked. "You just produced 550 gallons of clean drinking water with spellcraft for a rebel outfit that has trouble finding 550 gallons of water in two months. For a town that can't get enough water because the Imperial Japanese destroyed our water treatment plant, you are a lifesaver. Not to mention the lights, moving the palettes with your spells, and the whole 'destroyed a Japanese Armor Regiment and captured most of the tanks' thing, well, some people may have a higher opinion about you than you have for yourself."

Eric snorted, though after a second he smiled to relent. "So, what stands as your opinion?"

"Oh, I think you're just another poor soldier jumping from one mission to the next, like the rest of us. Only difference is, your list of missions is way higher than the rest of us. I mean, nazis and Imperial Japanese are one thing, but fighting the war Ragnarok is a whole different story. Kinda don't want to be part of it, you know?"

"In the end, you probably shall never be," Eric admitted. "I have my doubts about my own involvement, at least at the end. Still, my duty is not to outright win the war on my own, which is almost completely impossible, it is to establish a way for Existence to survive the war — that is the key concept of my duty."

"And what does that take?" Yvette asked, interested in the change of tone on what she thought she knew about his declarations prior.

"A large population throughout Existence, all capable of defending themselves, and unfettered by hostile parties or excessive governance."

"Freedom, in other words," Yvette mused. "Have you flown that by the Spetsnaz?"

"I am unconcered with the Soviets, in the big picture," Eric bypassed her question smoothly. "I refer to excesses of governance such as the controlling nature of the Nazis, or the omnicidal practices of the Imperial Japanese. From what I know of the Soviet model, it is below the problem thresholds that the Nazis or Imperial Japanese hold, but only barely. If we could restore nations such as America, England, or Brazil, where a people are able to expand and interact of their own volition, my goal is achieved."

"Wow," Yvette gaped. "Have you considered walking away from this?"

"I do not understand," Eric groused. "Where could one go now that the Imperial Japanese cannot strike them down?"

"Have you considered another planet?" Yvette asked.

"Another world?" Eric shook his head. "Verthandi put me on this planet for a reason. Today, it is clear that the reason is to build upon what is here, not to run away to another dimension."

Yvette scrunched her face fiercely. "That isn't what I meant. I meant maybe putting people on Mars, or Venus if you could use your spellcraft to clear the atmosphere?"

Her answer only caused Eric to frown mightily in turn. "What does the romanized names of Ares and Aphrodite have anything to do with discussions about worlds, and how would I put people on two otherwise-man-sized divinities?"

Yvette's eyes went wide with realization after twenty seconds of thinking about Eric's comment. "You...you're not something new, you're from the deep past," she said half-breathlessly. "Was there a man named Jesus Christ in your history or when you were alive?"

"I have read of this man's exploits, in the Bible," Eric noted. "No such man existed prior to my life or during it, on my world of birth."

"Then you have no understanding of astrophysics?" Yvette asked. In addition to being the training officer for the rebels, she was also a tutor and generalist teacher of her own right.

"I have no knowledge of even that term. I recognize the root term, astro, referring to that of the heavens, but that is it," Eric readily admitted. For all his cunning and skills of spellcraft or warfare, he knew the average ten-year-old even in this depressed land was better educated than he was. Given the power and prestige of the Nazis or IJA, he expected the ten-year-olds of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan to be supra-genius comparative to his raw understanding of Existence.

"That is correct, but only part of the story. Physics govern what exists and how it interacts."

"So, what exists in the heavens, and how it interacts," Eric combined the term.

"Correct. You learn fast. There's a school across the road, I'll see if I can get a textbook from them, but may I request a book on spellcraft from you? Simple trade?" Yvette asked, clearly anticipating the possibility...

...and Eric recognized it. "I think I can have a book for your use," Eric noted. Yvette was not long in departing, to which Eric began the consideration on where to start Yvette. Before she returned some minutes later, the Old Mage had his intention solidified.

"Here, three sciences books," Yvette sat them down on the locker at the end of Eric's bed. "A general sixth-grade science book, better for beginning, a higher-level physics book, and a higher Astronomy book."

"Unfortunately, I cannot reciprocate," Eric considered that he would not want to be seen as stingy on this matter. "For my ability to disseminate books, there is a limitation that I can only create a full-power copy of a single book once a week. I cannot give you more than one book without removing the second and subsequent books from my library completely."

"One is more than enough," Yvette reassured him that she would not consider him stingy on the matter.

"Library, create full duplicate of book 'Tome of Multipurpose Spellcraft'," Eric ordered of the metal plate he held. Below the plate, a book appeared with a small flash and dropped into his waiting hand. "Here," he passed it to the Rebel Trainer. "This book was given to me by one of Odin's Wolves, at the request of Odin himself. This is where I started my journey unto wizardry, and within you will find the spellcraft necessary to generate water in a barrel such as I have done so."

"Wow, that's...wow," Yvette could find no words, so she simply bent to the book in question. By reading the first line in nordic rune, the translation rune inherent to the book was tripped and converted the text to Spanish. "That's — it changed to Spanish!"

Eric tapped on the edge of her book with his Library Plate. "This is the reality I learned." The Old Mage then tapped on the three science books. "This is the reality I shall be learning. For I to be effective in the coming years, and the years of peace, I need an understanding of the world around me. I have much to learn."

"Not as much as I," Yvette half-whined, considering the task ahead of her after looking at some of the magic illustrations.

"Then teach yourself, and teach others by way of this book. Knowledge is forever, and spellcraft is an artifact of that knowledge."

"Will you start an academy?" Yvette asked.

"I will do so, after the campaign is done," Eric considered it a necessity of his coming challenges.

"I volunteer as your first student," Yvette said in a rush.

"By that time, I expect you would be my first staff instructor," Eric said with a small smile. "Still, if I survive the coming campaign, I will call upon you."

-x-x-x-

(2 September 2041, 1800 Hours)  
(Kyoto, Japan)

"Feh, nothing but review," the secretary to the Crown Prince noted with a hint of disgust.

"For us, yes. Let us see if the press has the same conclusions as we have," Prince Torahito cautioned her.

The news program came on after a brief commercial break. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Mei Sakura with your evening news programme. For tonight, we have a special presentation of our military analysts and field reporters. Compiled by our best and brightest, this is the 'Bloody Road of the Wizard'."

The opening scene of the special presentation was roughly as surreal as it was corny, the sight of footprints in blood, and an anime artist's rendition of the massive Armored Mage's armor that made it even more terrifying than Torahito thought of it. The infographic was accurate, showing a line of action and a scatter-plot insert of actions in Sao Paulo, with the caption of the title for dramatic effect.

"For most of us, the first time we actually saw this man was the day we saw him on television, slaughtering Imperial Japanese Army tanks and infantry with his high ancient spellcraft," Priestess Keiko Yamamoto said in a television interview that was incorporated into the programme. The cut-away was to the frightening visage of the trooper just after the camera turned on him for the first time, but the interview audio continued. "A few of us unlucky enough to encounter him before that day...they did not survive to tell about it. Sure, he has left survivors in his wake, but they were few, and crippled."

"What can you tell us about that?" the interviewer asked even as the first attack footage continued.

"Eric Atrebas blinded a gang in Sao Paulo with a solar flash spell that destroyed their eyesight. For me, diving into the mind of the one survivor of that gang was the first time I saw the wizard, through the memories of one who saw the Old Mage as the last sight of his life. What happened to the other survivors, it was horrible," Keiko said, never knowing that her actions in the interview would be used as indirect propaganda.

The voice changed to that of the programme narrator. "A man of no past, no known residence, no prior contact, only a name and a mission. Eric Atrebas became known by the shadow moniker _Kitsune_, or Fox-Demon, because of his early penchant for fire magicks and the apparent reclusiveness he showed. It would be later found out that he was not female, but something far more sinister."

Eric's now-infamous speech was replayed, just the ending stanza thereof. "I am Eric Atrebas, commissioned spellcraft operator to the Fates, and today I declare I am now the reaper of Nazis and Imperial Japanese. As long as it takes, I will sunder them all to dust and echoes, even if it takes me decades to do so. I have time, I have patience, and I have millions of spells and enchantments at my disposal to slay the demons. You ask if one being can destroy the Imperial Japanese? I ask you, can you find one being on this planet capable of stopping me from destroying the Imperial Japanese?"

The scene cut again to Keiko. "He told us directly where he was from and why he was here. He serves the Norns, the Goddesses who write history in old Norse legends, and that he now stands here to reap the Nazis and Imperial Japanese. In terms of older languages, you cannot make a more clear declaration of intent," the Shrine Maiden concluded.

"Given what he has said, and what he has done, we have no reason to believe he is lying," a senior military analyst commented during his own interview segment. "Granted, magic skills are not considered common combat skills or tactics, but so long as he exists on the battlefields of South America, we will have to consider it in our plans for pacifying the region."

The voice-over switched to Mei Sakura, and the map infographic came up. "This is the path Eric Atrebas has blazed through the South American garrison, with the red points being battles major or minor along the way. Additionally, these blue and green lines are other rebel activity, including troops with armor similar to the Mage."

"Pay special attention to the Mage, and how he fights in battle," a Military Analyst commented. "As an infantryman, my first and greatest fear was artillery, back when I was in the army. Military personnel are trained to destroy equivalent assets first, then attack others. Eric Atrebas has no peers on the battlefield, so he fights with the intent of disabling or destroying the most threatening forces first and working his way down. Relatively, he will ignore infantry when he has armor or artillery to defeat."

"Is there any way to exploit this?" the interviewer asked, though it was to Keiko after a quick screen wipe transition.

"So far, no. He said he is immune to weapons of mass destruction, and we can confirm he was within two blocks of the gas attack in Sao Paulo, so we have to assume he is not lying. We are presently exploring non-technological means to defeat the Armored Mage," Priestess Yamamoto said.

"He is certainly sociopathic at least at a level, and a fetishist of a strange order," a Psychologist said, pointing to a television display of footage released by the rebels. "You can tell from the audio of this reel, he is using metal music as some kind of psychological prop while attacking defenseless Imperial Japanese troops. He paralyzed most of an Armored Cavalry regiment, a showing that he wanted to drag out the suffering of the unit while the Rebels came in and looted the heavy equipment."

"Turn it off," Torahito ordered. The secretary was quick to mute the programme.

"Was not expecting much, Highness, but that was both shallow and drew incorrect conclusions," Hotaru Ichida complained.

"Nothing new in it, at least to my eyes," the secretary noted.

"We need harder intel, but we cannot risk valuable persons," Torahito said. "I will speak to my father about putting spies into the area to determine what they can. We cannot win without knowing."

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence...)

"This one will be the largest we have so far eliminated. Be wary, be swift with the spear, Mikka, and if everything goes wrong, run like Hades," Diana noted.

"Safe-house Gate Rune is clear," Kiona commented after she checked a bracelet she had enchanted to verify it was clear and ready.

"I am ready," Mikka noted with only a small hint of trepidation.

"Remember, behind the jaw, below the eye," Kiona cautioned. the brain of a dragon was prodigious in size, but protected by a lot of heavy bone material that required a magicked spear or other weapon to penetrate. The area of the brain to strike that caused instantaneous death was in the lower sections of the brain, same on both humans and Dragons.

The three girls had patterned the Dragon's movements and sleep cycles carefully, giving them a timetable to attack the Dragon when it would be most likely to be asleep. This Dragon had torched ten villages in the area and killed some 230 persons, as well as the common draconic trait of hoarding gear and wealth for no apparent purpose. Not much like the Dragon was welcome to sell off the gear or use the currency in common transactions...

In the first weeks after their arrival on this hellish planet, the Three Sisters had made for themselves a significant name by simply doing what the people wanted — without the bureaucratic overhead that the Guilds suffered from. The first and loudest such action was the appearance of three witches walking into town with bloodied arms and the horn of a dragon across their shoulders. Questions were asked, proof demanded, and the three led a party out to where the Dragon rested in death. Not only did the town remain standing for another month, the townspeople ate well and the three Atrebas Sisters now had a lot of dragon bone or dragon scale to use for enchanted items.

Naturally, the Dragon Hunter's Guild was less than pleased with their conduct. Diana, Mikka, and Kiona had responded by way of taking out a very dangerous Green Dragon and then publicly slayed the inquisitor the Dragon Hunters had hired to 'torture' 'confessions' out of the Atrebas sisters. With that simple action, the Atrebas Sisters established themselves as outcast to the Guilds — which suited them perfectly. They did not want any part of a useless Guild structure, they were out to save the people from the Mystic menace.

By the time of their seventh dead Dragon, the Guilds were rightly furious with the Atrebas Sisters — but the periphery towns, villages, and the Fortress City Zanluxos absolutely loved their services. The problem with the Guilds trying to do something about it, though, was simple: the average life expectancy of a Dragon Hunter was 1.35 dragons, and no Guild Hunter had ever slain a fifth and lived to tell the tale. None of the Guild Hunters stood a chance against the Atrebas Sisters, who were capable of hunting and slaying any manner of Mystic — Elves, Faeries, Dragons, Rakshasa, Wyverns, Dwarves, Elementals, Gnomes, Djinn, Halflings, Basilisk, even other Humans; no living creature could stand against the Terrible Trio for long. The Guilds withdrew their facilities from Zanluxos, which prompted the Terrible Trio to take the largest Guild Hall (the Dragon Slayers Guild) and convert it into the Atrebas Arms and Magicks Academy.

Of course, when Dragons threatened towns in the Atrebas area, the first persons called on to see to the Dragons were, naturally, the Atrebas Sisters.

No metal armor was used — metal armor would be reflective, and the sound it made would wake the dead just as fast as it would wake a sleeping Dragon. Heavily-enchanted leather armor gave them resistance to fire, poisons, acids, and lightning, the four major groups of dragon breath, as well as the core enchantments that protected from physical trauma (Dragons did happen to have talons and teeth easier measured in feet than inches, which were usually lethal to humans).

Metal weapons had been specially blackened by charcoal powder to prevent easy reflections — Dragons were very well attracted to shiny items; for that matter, none of the Atrebas would wear jewelry or finery when assaulting a Dragon. Mikka swore the damn monstrosities could smell Gold at a mile's distance.

Hand signals were used to coordinate movements around the Dragon. Mikka and Kiona carried spears of such length and enchantment that they could reach over the forearm of a Dragon and reliably penetrate through the base of their skull. Diana carried a massive Bastard Sword with such enchantments that she could charge in and chop into the Dragon as a possible backup way of killing it with just plain brute force trauma. She had once had to do that, and suffered some nasty acid burns that required several days of healing spells and regeneration magicks to correct.

When the two spears were in place, Diana held her sword at present hold, as a flag for both sides to be ready. When the two nodded readiness, Diana timed her signal to strike by the snoring of the Dragon, so the most sound made by the Dragon would cover up their own actions. Mikka and Kiona both drew back and thrust at the same time, aiming roughly for the same point in space on divergent angles.

It only took two seconds for Diana to realize what had happened with their strike. "Jitterbug Dragon! RUN!"

All three ran hard and fast for the cave entrance, then once outside they turned immediately left to put rock between themselves and the flailing Dragon. "Another one! Are we doing something wrong?" Kiona asked.

"We may not have struck true, the small brain may be farther forward in the skull," Mikka answered between ragged breaths.

"Give it another ten minutes, it is dead regardless," Diana noted. "Bastard, torching villages," she spat her contempt for the dying creature.

"Something has to give, and it won't be our mission," Kiona said with all the finality of a death sentence.

"How long to wait for this one?"

The sound of scrabbling claws ended after a loud thump. "So answers that. Swords at the ready," Diana ordered, hefting hers to a proper combat position.

As it happened, the swords were not needed. The Dragon in question was suffering only from the final twitches of death, nothing more and nothing less. When Mikka and Kiona pulled their spears, the Dragon gave one final convulsion and moved no further. All three would readily admit there was an element of sadness to the necessity, but their purpose was to ensure lives were saved — and a Dragon did not factor into the necessities of Ragnarok on the side Diana, Mikka and Kiona served.

"May this one Rest in Peace," Diana said, touching her sword to the muzzle of the deceased beast. "We remove a horn for a bona fide, and enlist help from the village to collect the meat and materials."

* * *

**Author's Chapter Afterword**:

And so begins a tradition, a policy of the Mages that will manifest multiple times in the coming chapters, in the coming Sections, in wars yet to be written of properly.

The consideration here is simple. It is (falsely) assumed that Eric is immune to weapons of mass destruction, and so far he is proving to be unstoppable by conventional weapon systems, meaning that the Imperial Japanese Army is effectively out of luck. Their 'best hope' at this time is the Shrine Maidens and other assorted mystics that might have the capabilities to tangle with Eric, though even that is a long-shot with Hitomi's track record.

So, the premise that Eric is operating under is simple: avoid urban centers, making it more difficult for human-based intelligence factors to find him. By marching from place to place, he avoid roadblocks and again human-based intelligence. By moving alone, he prevents undue risk to his comrades and allows for a second or third operations front. Such a combination becomes the way Eric moves ever-so-slowly toward his goals.

The pace of the campaign is also part of his strategy. By making it slow and deliberate, the Imperial Japanese have speed advantages but they also have raw indecision as to Eric's moves or intentions. The days upon days of fear, constantly on guard for a being you cannot stop, this makes the troops edgy and brings uncertainty to the civilians. This also has a dual effect on the captured populations, in that the continued existence of Eric Atrebas is proof that the Imperial Japanese cannot win all of their battles, which is important to the rebellion and their sympathizers.

The other story of the day is that Eric's exploits are making a lot of noise in the media of the controlling nations — Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan. You see some of that in this chapter, but as the campaigns go forward you will see a lot more media effects even through the filter of national information control and propaganda. Another consideration is the raw information below the level of the media — soldiers tend to write a lot of letters home when in the field, and if those letters suddenly stop but the press says everything is going well, then you have an information schism that tends to cause bad things to happen to governments...

Eric hasn't whooped out anything hugely powerful in terms of spellcraft of late, mainly because of a lack of proper targets for it, but that will change in the next chapter. I will have notations of the new spells he has used below in the notes section, but expect a lot more entries in the chapters to come.

That's it for today's notes. NEXT UP: **Brasilia becomes the next major city to 'host' the Mage in his quest to stop the slaughter on planet. Of course, the Imperial Japanese Army will object to his presence and purpose...**

* * *

**Review Replies**: Four reviews for the MMC 12 chapter, much thanks to the readers for the input! Keep 'em coming, as shall I!

Takeshi Yamato: Well, we always advance forward in the stories, though there will be a minor detour on the next loop around the JW stories. Stay tuned for more info :)

Meow114: I have not had a huge amount of exposure to WH40K, but I hear much good things about it. May have to look into that, possibly for inclusion into some of my stories or as a standalone issue.

Sieben Nightwing: That is only the beginning in terms of speeches that will raise eyebrows all across a planet (or multiple).

Your guesses on references are headed in the right direction...

Nim Maj: There was some action in this chapter, but there will be plenty more in the next chapter!

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE REVIEWS! More fuel, MOAR FIRE! I love ideas! (and anything you say can and will be used for ideas!)

* * *

**The Gripe Sheet**:

No complaints from the chapter. As always, much thanks to **Necroblade**, **Takeshi Yamato**, and **Sieben Nightwing** for the assist!

* * *

**Footnotes**:

(1): **A**rmored **C**avalry **R**egiment, a designation for a regiment heavy on armor and otherwise thin on Infantry or other attached assets. Designed mostly to breach defenses, with follow-on Mechanized Infantry units to exploit the breach after the ACR has done its job. The first use of this tactic in modern implementation was World War 1, though the Nazis made it famous with the term Blitzkrieg (1A) and by repeatedly using it to surprising effect during the early stages of the war.

(1A): Interesting note about the term **Blitzkrieg** (Lightning War in English). The term in question was not used officially by the Nazis, at least not inside the military. The name was constructed as a propaganda description of the frontline actions of generals such as Paulus and Rommel. Interestingly, the term has gained coin in the modern era to describe lightning strikes and concentrated breaches of enemy defenses; In operational terms, the actions in and around Kuwait during Desert Storm / Gulf One were described repeatedly as Blitzkrieg, just as one example.

(2): This is a known scientific fact. Your brain uses the same centers for love and combat, and engaging in one is likely to cause thoughts about the other.

(3): Murphy's Laws of Military Combat: tracers work **BOTH** ways. By using his machine gun on the IJA infantry, he gave away his position clearly to the IFV driver, who reported it to the vehicle commander, who had the gunner hammer on Eric.

(4): **J**oint **S**urveillance **T**arget **A**ttack **R**adar **S**ystem. Also sometimes called Joint-STARS. A specialist aircraft converted from old Boeing 707 freighters to include a ground-search radar and command facilities. These aircraft are used to coordinate search and destroy missions as well as provide tactical intelligence for theater commanders. When operating alone, they can also command aircraft in strike missions (as is shown here). The Imperial Japanese JSTARS platform uses converted Boeing 767-300 aircraft — better fuel efficiency and payload.

* * *

**Included Works**:

REAL LIFE

—the Imperial Japanese IFV is based off the existing JSDF Type 89 IFV, only with a 4-barrel concealable missile launcher instead of the tw-barrel fixed IRL version.

* * *

**Spell Registry**:

COMBAT WIZARDRY scope

Combat Effect Spellcraft (Support Spellcraft, Gray Spellcraft, etc)

—Paralysis Shell: MinDR of 17.500, material components require a voltage differential in the area of the caster (static electricity or a battery works fine), effect area must be inside an atmosphere to cast. At its simplest form, this spell interferes with commands relayed in the voluntary nervous system of all biologics inside the effect sphere of the spell. As this spell works on the electrical commands inside the nervous system, it requires a material component of electricity to do its job — making this one of the lowest-rated spells to actually require material components. As a result of this, however, the spell has a very high effect ramp-up for a spell hailing from the lower reaches of combat spellcraft.

For each 0.500 DR of spellcaster's power, the diameter of the spell increases 5 yards distance from the brainstem of the caster, meaning that at the lowest casting power possible it has a radius of just over 125 feet. The Paralysis effect caused by the spell last 1 hour plus 1 minute per DR of the spellcaster. There are no limits to how many beings that can be affected by the spell, but not all beings are susceptible to paralysis in this fashion. It is estimated that somewhere near 20% of beings throughout Existence that have electrically-fired nervous / control systems cannot be paralyzed in this fashion. Additionally, this spell will not affect a spellcaster that is double or greater the DR of the original caster.

Note that at spellcraft levels above 1000 DR (Executor / Second Transcendance), this spell will also compromise the automatic / sympathetic nervous control systems. In such cases, paralysis of these systems will generally be lethal in less than a full minute for affected persons. FULL ENCHANTMENT: _**Sea of waves, sky unhindered, heed the will of those within you. Create constriction upon all beings inside a Paralysis Shell**_


	14. Retribution Applied Directly

(Multimage Chronicles, Set 1, Chapter 14: Retribution Applied Directly)

(3 September 2041, 0100 Hours)  
(Rebel Safehouse / Routing Facility, Uberlândia, Brazil)

"This is the place?" Tabitha asked after a few moments.

"It doesn't look like much, but this is indeed our home facility and routing warehouse. Anything you need, you will get," Marcos Julius said calmly. "Are you deficient on any supplies?"

"No, we just need a recharge and a decent bath," Carlos Sandeira responded quietly.

"You will get both, here," the facility commander responded heartily. "Come, I will show you where you can hangar your armor for charging." He opened a garage door for the armor wearers to enter the facility through.

"This is pretty swank," Tabitha groused.

"Nowhere near the caliber of your underground base," Marcos said. "I'd kill to be in the thick of it like you guys were."

"We were in the thick of it — the thickest part of a chemical weapons attack. Thankfully, we had support," Katy Hoyos answered his semi-plea for action.

"Indeed, you had a wizard who made rings capable of rendering ineffective poisons or chemical weapons."

"Yeah, Atrebas," Tabitha confirmed. "He's a helluva lot more than just 'support', though. Kind of a do-all guy, though not in the usual ways. He learns fast, but he does have a habit of using older techniques for correcting problems. Though, I have noticed, he prefers not to use spellcraft if he can do something manually."

"Cultural thing?" Marcos opined. "Preference for doing things the hard way?"

"May be," Vladimir groused. "How many men do you have working this facility?" The Spetsnaz officer asked after a group of them stopped and saluted the Armored Infantry as they passed.

"We have twenty regulars and thirty ringers, depending on operations in the area," The Cell / Logistics Commander said. "And we get a lot of traffic in and out from ops personnel, we do R&R, resupply, and safe-house for persons that have drawn some heat. We even have a wizard in here, somewhere," Marcos noted offhand; "The same wizard that pilots that set of armor," and Marcos pointed to a set of armor that was already plugged in to a charging terminal.

"Eric? He is here?" Daniel Porom asked in the seconds after Tabitha brought the column to a halt.

"I am here," a familiar and somewhat haunting voice answered from the shadow of a crate stack. After a moment, the Mage stepped out into the light of the loading docks. "Well come, Tabitha. I heard you saw some action on the way in."

"We have some stories to tell, Eric." Vladimir answered for the unit. "I heard you took a few nasty hits as well."

"I have, but those tales can wait. Stow your armor and get cleaned up; those tales can wait for another hour, one that is better suited for stories and meals," Eric offered as a plan for the day.

"Hard to beat that plan," Carlos groused.

"I agree," Tabitha answered. "I have Anita and Nicole on the roof for guard for now. They'll come down around 0600 hours."

"Clearing our armor will take thirty minutes," Tabitha said. "We'll talk at breakfast."

"Five hours?" Eric checked a watch that he had been issued by one of the rebels. "I will marshall a breakfast for everyone."

"He cooks, as well?" Tabitha said in surprise. "I wonder, how do you ask for a date in Durgan?"

Eric wisely said nothing. Even if the question was in jest, the old Mage sensed that there was no answer that would not be used against him in this case.

-x-

(5.5 hours later)

"Holy shit, he really can cook," Vladimir gaped after he entered the dining hall area.

"Wow, I can hear my arteries hardening just by looking at breakfast," Anita Rockholm groused. "Still, you only live once."

"And you're learning spellcraft; maybe one of those spells will ream the crap out of your system," Nicole patted her spotter on the back.

"Energy is important, even for a day of equipment maintenance and planning," Eric said as he emerged from the kitchen area. "We have a plan, and I will need to brief you in for the planning and coordination."

"Where is this operation to be?" Carlos asked. "I'm already sure you're going to kick some ass, I just want to know where."

"Brasilia," Eric said as he took seat at the 'tail' of the table opposite Tabitha's seat at the head.

"Wait, what?" Nicole asked. "You're going to hit Japan's most fortified facilities in South America?"

"Aye," Eric answered directly. "I cannot campaign to clear IJA or Nazi influence in South America so long as they have easy air cover to any area of the continent. I also do not want to be the subject of an Imperial Japanese airstrike again any time soon."

"That's still insane, _amigo_," Carlos groused, even while he dug into the scrambled eggs. "You're talking the airbase, the main garrison, the combat engineer regiments, these are some serious targets. You sure about this?"

"Aye, I have thought long and hard about it," Eric admitted. "In Durgan, when we have reason to question a campaign, we go through a process called 'questioning the intention'. You wager everything that must be done, against the necessities of your intention. I have gone through the process twice, and both times I have concluded that I have no way to complete my intent without going through Brasilia the hard way."

"Okay, so you're going," Tabitha groused. "Against all rational thought, you are going. How do you do this?"

"I have four objectives," Eric noted, given the plan had changed from his initial purpose. "I destroy the enemy air force, I hit and clear the garrison, I hit and hopefully cripple the Miko that have been harassing us, and then I make a show of removing the IJA flag from Brasilia."

"I hope you have a plan for support, because that garrison is close to fifteen thousand troops," Vladimir opined, a number higher than the rebels were expecting at the facility.

"The rebels are mobilizing now," Eric said. "This will require effort from us all. Can I count on you to join the assault?"

"No way in hell would I miss this," Nicole said with cheer. "Time to make some real noise with heavy rifles."

"If she's in, I am in," Anita pointed to her comrade.

"They'll need adult supervision," Carlos waved his finger at the sniper and spotter.

"He will need adult supervision," Katy Hoyos pointed at Carlos. Eric was hoping she would volunteer, given she had the longest time in armor of the whole unit, bar none.

"You will require a demolitions specialist, _nyet_?" Vladimir asked.

"And someone to coordinate the support personnel," Tabitha continued calmly.

"And you'll need early warning from us," Kari pointed to her twin brother Daniel.

"Just remember, mine is the only magicked set of armor among the unit," Eric noted. "Allow me to draw the fire; you provide cover for the rebel cells, but stay out of the fire lanes of any major enemy weapons."

"How quickly can you correct that?" Tabitha asked.

"In preparation for the assault, I will be setting up the relic base on Anita's armor, but I will not have enough time to do more than that. With the relic base enchantments on her armor, she will be able to use her spellcraft without fear of her spells inadvertently targeting her armor."

"Excellent," Tabitha said with a smile.

-x-x-x-

(3 September 2041, 1600 Hours)  
(IJA Miko Headquarters, Brasilia, Brazil)

"This is where it will happen," Hitomi noted without taking her main focus off the sharpening of her sword. There were two decent nicks in the blade courtesy of the engagement against Atrebas, as his Gladius was hard enough to stop her blade cold.

"Here? In this building? Or in Brasilia?" a junior Miko (Healing Specialist) asked.

"Both," Hitomi ground her sword down the sharpening stone once more, a chilling sound to any of the ladies who were watching her and listening to her lessons or truisms. "He is not a bombastic one, but coldly ruthless. He moves from shadow to shadow in normal practice, but his silence after the airstrike is telling. He will turn his fury on Brasilia soon enough. He must at least render the airbase unusable; it is too dangerous a threat, even to him."

"What about us?" another of the Junior Miko asked, this one a specialist in anti-demon operations.

"We will definitely go into the field against him, but I expect no result," One last pass against the sharpening stone, then Hitomi ran a silicone cloth down the blade to remove any metal filings and apply an anti-rust coating to it. "We are priestesses, he is a soldier — a divine soldier, at that." She made a short flair of sheathing her sword in the proper form. "Never let that distinction fade from your mind. His purpose is writ in the heavens, and his method is warfare. We must be smart about this, or it shall be our ranks who feel the bite of a blade."

"Hai, _sensei_," the over-eager priestess answered.

"Do not cast your life away on the edge of his blades," Hitomi cautioned. "We shall be doing battle against this one for years to come, I suspect. Be prepared to fight the lengthy campaign, and do not expect that a temporary setback delivered to him now shall have effect down the road."

"Sound advice," High Priestess Matsushita commented. "May I have the use of your sharpening stone?"

"By all means," Hitomi stepped away from the table so Mei could maneuver her much larger Naginata into position where it could be properly sharpened.

"We are discussing the lack of an operation from the Norse Wizard?" The senior High Priestess asked.

"We were," Hitomi noted. "I am thinking, he prepares to hit us."

"He intends Brasilia as his next target," Mei considered the likely prospect. "It was not his original direction of travel, but it is obvious on the face of it. The Air Force knocked him down, and he sees them as his main threat now. We will need to be ready for this, to test for any possible weakness he may have, and to exploit it if possible."

"Excuse the question, please, but what if he has no known or usable weaknesses?" Coming from a Specialist Thunder-Elemental Miko, Hitomi considered it a serious and poignant question.

"Something must harm this monstrosity, we need only find it," Mei said coldly.

Hitomi regarded the elder Miko for a moment, then sighed. When the press spoke of 'few who had survived direct combat with Atrebas', Hitomi considered herself very lucky to be on that shortlist. If anything, his reputation for direct engagements had made him famous for not leaving survivors when combat had to be done. Mei had not seen him in battle, had not sensed his aura, had done nothing against the Mage directly. That made her, in all likelihood, very likely to underestimate the lethality of the divine mage, which would probably cost lives in the short run and victory in the long run.

"Whatever you do, do not directly or indirectly engage the Armored Mage," Hitomi cautioned the listening shrine maidens. "You are facing a foe that has no conventional weaknesses, and every skill in extant conventional warfare. If you present him a clear threat, he will act on it, and there will be little we can do to save you after that."

"Sadly enough, I must agree," Mei commented. "He is surprisingly lethal. Never forget that."

_Still she underestimates him. I sense this will be bloody for us all_, Hitomi thought behind a passive face. Mei continued to sharpen up the blade of her naginata, a weapon she was famous for, but which Hitomi knew would be veritably useless against Eric Atrebas. The 'Naginata of Nigeria' was about to go head to head against 'The Commissioned Spellcraft Operator' and the only one Hitomi could foresee losing was Mei. Not for a lack of skill, but of veterancy.

"Why would he do this? What have we done to earn the disfavor of the Gods he worships?" a Miko specialist of flame reading asked. That she was asking such a question was proof that her ability to read flames had thus far failed to generate the necessary answer.

"I wish I knew," Hitomi answered coldly. She could understand the drive of his combat, but the lack of a reason to his crusade was infuriatingly confusing to the Shrine Maiden (Anti-demon Specialist). "Before this is resolved, I will know, even if I have to beat it out of him."

"That I would not mind seeing," A junior Miko (non-specialist) commented dryly. It was a sentiment shared by everyone in the room, but to which none expected to see in this coming battle.

-x-x-x-

(4 September 2041, 1300 Hours)  
(Rebel Safehouse / Routing Facility, Uberlândia, Brazil)

"If you're really going to try and trash their air force on the ground, this is what you need, sir," and a junior Rebel pulled a strange weapon from a storage crate. "We've been saving this thing for just the right circumstance, and I can't think of a better time to put it to use than today."

"If I may, is it a shotgun?" Eric asked, wondering if the German 10-gauge he had used prior had a far larger and nastier cousin. Manufactured by the now-defunct United States, going by the markings on the crate.

"Oh hell no, sir! This fine piece of artwork is a M79 grenade launcher. You've used hand grenades before, right?"

"I have had hand grenades thrown at me before," Eric answered with a wry smile. "Had no effect on my armor."

"Well, sir, this is all the fun of a hand grenade, only fired out of this tube out to 700 yards or more. No more throwin' your arm out of socket, you just pop one of these grenades into the tube, close it up," the teenage rebel demonstrated with a training dummy round the process of loading, "then sight up and squeeze. Once it's away, you kick it open with the lever on the side, pull the empty hull out, reload and repeat."

"And what shall one of these grenades do to a plane?"

The Rebel stifled a bark of laughter, in which his stifle sounded halfway to choking on something. "Sir, you hit a plane with this, for damn sure it is not flying again."

"I like that thought," Eric judged with a wry smile. "How many grenades can you reasonably mount to my armor for it?"

"I could probably put enough on one panel of the back of your shield to completely trash all the planes in Brasilia. More than that would require a field resupply." He considered something for a second, an interesting process for Eric to observe. "Hey, Marcos!"

"What is it, kid?" the Logistics Cell Leader asked, though not unkindly.

"If Eric's going to be the tip of the spear, what are we going to do about keeping him locked and loaded?"

"Good question, kid. Assemble a team to figure out how to resupply the Infantry Armor guys on the fly, they all will need it. You have priority of effort right now; if this is going to work, these guys have to keep going."

"On it, sir!" The kid handed off the M79 to Eric, then departed the area without further word. With nothing else to consider or do, Eric went through the motions of loading, unloading, arming, and aiming the grenade launcher, then did so using only his right hand as primary as he would have to do in armor.

"I find it extremely surprising how quickly you take to new weapons and processes," Marcos said with a chuckle. "Being from the past, I..." he faltered, trying to find a non-offensive way of saying what he felt only to come up with nothing.

"You would naturally expect my default to be to bladed weapons, bows at the most complex, to shun technologies as some form of black magic heresy?" Eric chuckled after Marcos nodded eagerly to Eric's apropos of the situation. "The big red flag of such a description is that I am a black magic user, so I am reasonably sure this piece of mechanical manslaying artwork is not magicked."

"Got me there," Marcos chuckled.

"More to the point, Durgan troops are, erm, cosmopolitan would be the word for accepting new ideas and techniques, right?" Eric groped for the term.

"I think that's right," the Cell Leader nodded. "You really think forward so much?"

"I must think forward," Eric admitted. "A very nasty war is being fought elsewhere in Existence. Ragnarok. Eventually it will come here, but that is far down the road. I must be prepared for it, and so must any I can prepare for that coming war. Between now and that final battle, I have a world to live in, and it would not be wise to ignore the trappings of this planet."

"Ah, that makes sense, a very creepy and grim sort of sense."

"Those are tales for another day," Eric brushed the subject off. "Would you be willing to enlighten me to the differences between these grenade launcher cartridges?"

Before Marcos could begin the lesson, the kid was back. "Sir! I've got it! We've got ten-ton hauler trucks available, we use two of them to service just the Armored Infantry!"

"Damn good, kid, now make it happen," Marcos pointed him towards two of the trucks in question. "Use trucks five and six for the resupply work. And find someone to coordinate the other truck, while you command one of them."

"Yes, sir!" With a sloppy salute, the kid was on the way to get the trucks in question organized.

Once the kid was out of earshot, Marcos asked a question unexpected by Eric. "Do you object to having him in a support role?"

"Why would I?" Eric asked in counter after several seconds of considering the question.

"He's barely fourteen. Lost his parents to an IJA airstrike that hit the wrong house."

Eric snorted. "I saw my first full-up sword-and-shield battle at fourteen. Personally, I would have expected to see more of the greenhorns in this engagement than are actually doing so."

"That's pretty hard," Marcos roused, thinking of being in battle sword-and-shield, and he could not imagine himself doing so at fourteen.

"Durgan is a hard city, and my purpose is harder still." After a moment's silence, Eric relented and cracked a purely mischievous smile. "Of course, I only saw three actual battles in Durgan before they kicked me out of town for 'violating a prostitute'."

"Violating a prostitute? How the hell do you do that? Not pay her?" Marcos asked.

"Personally, I would like to know exactly how or when I was supposed to have violated the wench. This, of course, after I said multiple times that I would not have pleasured her with the haft of a pike, lest it still somehow contaminate me from ten feet away."

"That...oh, holy shit, now that's a skank I think would scare anybody away, even the most desperate," Marcos was working very hard to suppress outright laughter.

"My best friend in the Bladesmen preferred the apropos that it would have been safer to castrate oneself with a rusty table knife than to sleep with her," Eric amplified the description. "Myself, being engaged to marry not long after I graduated into the Bladesmen, I had no desire whatsoever to take such a chance with my loins, lest my wife-to-be take her vengeance out on me for such contamination."

"Well, damn good to have you, anyways," Marcos said wholeheartedly. "It's the skank and the city that misses out, and we get all the profit from them booting you on false charges."

Eric considered the cell leader's position for a few hard moments, then began chuckling about the sheer irony of the statement.

-x-x-x-

(5 September 2041, 1100 Hours)  
(National Socialist Headquarters, Manaus, Brazil)

"Our nightmare de rigeur has gone silent," Maximilian Rudelt groused to his direct superior. "I do not like the sound of silence, especially against a foe that makes a lot of noise whenever he pops up."

"You and I both, old friend," _Oberstgruppenführer_ Heinrich Von Stauffenberg confirmed his fears. "It has been nearly a week since anyone has seen him. I would like to think the asshole is dead, died of internal bleeding or something, but until I have a body in the morgue matching his description I must assume otherwise."

"And the 'otherwise' part is what really sucks," _Hauptsturmführer_ 'Mad Max' Rudelt continued the thought of his old friend and commanding officer. "He has not resumed his prior march, so he is likely laying low somewhere in a triangle defined as Uberlândia, Goiânia, and Paracatu. Where he goes from there, we don't know."

"God probably doesn't know," Heinrich countered. "Okay, if he is in that kind of box, his next target is almost assuredly going to be Brasilia. Has anyone informed the Japanese that something badass this way comes?"

"They know," Maximilian answered coldly. "They're preparing everything for the inevitable attack — air, ground, armor, even their Shrine Maidens are getting in on the action."

"Nice, maybe one of those modern-day witches can beat the wizard," Heinrich groused. He did not like anything paranormal, even the SS Paranormal Division itself, and this was perfect reason why. He had the best forces in South America at his command, and not a whit of a chance to stop this armored magic-slinging menace.

"Honest betting?" Max asked.

"I don't play a dishonest bet, old friend," Heinrich answered wryly.

"Well, honest bet, Atrebas flattens the entire IJA Garrison at Brasilia, including the Miko."

Heinrich reached down to one of his desk's lower drawers, and came out with two cans of _Vaterlandia_ Sauerkraut, which was highly prized among the SS forces as a bargaining chip between men and units, given how hard it was to come by decent Sauerkraut in South America. "Fair enough as a wager?"

"Split the difference if he wrecks part of the garrison but loses," Max confirmed the bet was on.

"You have a wager, then," The General acknowledged. "Win or lose, we'll do a barbeque for the press coverage."

"Looking forward to it," Max said with a smile.

"So, win or lose, what do we do about this Rebel flare-up?" Heinrich brought the conversation back to (official) business.

"We have the 607 and 610 Regiments, the greenhorns replacing our depleted forces, that we could use as a buffer against our regular forces. I would say, move one to just northwest of Brasilia, orient it southeast with the armor forward, and the second regiment should go southeast of Brasilia, oriented due west. If they make a move, we try to box them into the roughlands southwest of the former Brazilian capital city."

Heinrich grunted at the otherwise clever plan, but he had a different idea on the matter. "How about this: station both regiments southeast of Brasilia, and use them as hounds to drive them toward the hunters, preferably the 333 regiment and _Division South America_," Heinrich wagered a larger force than Max would have presumed for this task, but the reason was fairly obvious. If Eric Atrebas was involved, the lethality of the Rebels was magnified two orders of magnitude, which would assuredly necessitate increased forces to take them out.

"We could do that, but we need artillery to keep them at arm's length," Max considered. "If we get close to that wizard, inadvertently or deliberately, it gets bloody."

"What we really need is nuclear arsenal," Heinrich groused. "If I could isolate the bastard, a good saturation of nukes would permanently wreck his desire to 'sunder the Nazis and IJA'." The last part was in a direct echo of Atrebas' speech to the camera on the first night anyone lived to tell the tale. Max thought it a fair impression of the old Wizard, though certainly not humorous a subject.

"You heard the brass-brass, no nukes. He's already said he is immune to them, and nobody wants to test what his reaction is if we use them."

"I don't think anything will happen if he is dead, radioactive dust in the wind," Heinrich half-complained. "Still, you are right, orders are orders in this case. Plan for two divisions total in the forces for this blocking operation. If we have to draw down to danger levels in some of the garrisons, close them and centralize the troops. We can always repopulate the Garrisons after we win."

"And if we do not win?" Max asked.

"We will be too fucked to give much of a damn at that point, now will we?" The General asked the Captain.

"F-U-C—" Max began the traditional soldier's corruption to the old 'Mickey Mouse' title song.

"K-E-D—" Heinrich continued in a baritone voice.

"A-G-A-I-N," both officer concluded the chant.

After Max finished giggling maniacally, he sighed. "Some days, you have to love this job, even if it will be death of us and the ruin of the Fatherland."

"Well, when everyone thinks they are doing the right thing, the impact sound of heads butting will make a loud noise heard for generations to come," Von Stauffenberg opined.

"Well, old friend, here's to hoping we live long enough to hear the echoes of that impact."

The orders to move the forces would go out that afternoon, though the forces would never make it to their pre-planned positions in time to make a difference.

-x-x-x-

(6 September 2041, 0500 Hours)  
(IJA Airbase, Southern edge of Brasilia)

Getting into the airbase was simple for the Armored Mage. A Rebel attack two nights ago had destroyed part of the perimeter fence, making for an easy entry into the restricted area for Eric.

Once inside, though, the sheer silence of the place was almost startling to Eric. He expected a lot more noise and activity on the airbase, but the multitudes of planes parked in dispersed array made no sound. The wind was significantly louder than any mechanical sounds in the area, though a few late-shift mechanics made some minor repairs to the craft.

Once more, invisibility was the tool Eric used to enter the base, though this time he also included a 'shell of silence' spell on himself to prevent anyone hearing him for at least an hour. It prevented him from using spellcraft (which required the spoken word), but it also prevented anyone hearing him approach or shoot his weapons. That last would be critical — the longer Eric remained undetectable, the more damage he could cause.

Eric continued his march into the heart of the airbase ramp area, unconcerned with any conflicts of personnel or vehicle — Eric had seen one vehicle and maybe six mechanics, hardly a threat of running into someone. It took ten minutes of hard march to arrive at his destination, though, which ate into his magicked protections.

He did not yet know the differences between the individual planes, but he did know the small ones were fighters, the mid-size ones were attack planes, and the largest planes were either strategic bombers (rare) or transports. The fighters were what supposedly hit him with bombs, so he wanted their ranks scrapped down as soon as humanly possible, thus he decided to start right in the middle of the largest concentration of them.

The old Mage unlocked and loosed the M79 grenade launcher from its latch on the back of his shield, kicked it open to verify a live shell in the tube, closed it up, and took a one-handed aim at a fighter somewhat down the ramp from where he stood. He hesitated only a moment to make sure he was sighted on the wing root of the plane in question, then squeezed the trigger closed.

Aircraft were designed to be as resilient as possible given the necessary engineering requirements of building something designed to fly. One thing most aircraft were not designed for, however, was direct application of high explosives and fragmentation to the structure of the craft. While it would seem counterintuitive to most people, a simple grenade could easily destroy or render inoperable most aircraft, and Eric was banking on it.

The entire South American rebellion was banking on it, as it happened. He would not know until much later, but the Old Mage's audience was global for this symphony of explosions.

The first grenade struck the port-side wing root of the plane, inches below the gunport for the 25mm gatling cannon. With the main structure support sheared by the explosion, the wing of the plane collapsed down to the tarmac, rendering that plane unusable. Hot fragmentation tore into the topped-off fuel tanks in the center of the body and the wings, creating a small and temporary inferno in the tanks until the fire-retardant cellular baffles inside them snuffed out the flames.

With the first shot a clear success, Eric kicked open the M79, extracted and bagged the empty hull, and locked the tube of the gun into the specially-crafted hold-point for it on the back of his shield. Given he was too close to a pair of fighters to use grenade launcher rounds on them, the old Mage went for hand grenades — one grenade in the open cockpit of a fighter, another grenade in the engine intake of the other — and two more planes were rendered inoperable for the duration.

The Armored Mage moved vantage points to gain a clear shot at two more fighters, and while in transit took the time to load his grenade launcher with a new high-explosive dual purpose round. The complete lack of sound on chambering, closing, and firing the weapon was somewhat disorienting to the Mage; the only warning the shot was loosed was a small hint of recoil through the armored glove, and the only indicator of result was the result on the planes. Thankfully, the targeting system on the Infantry Armor had special controls for handling grenade launchers; the designers had considered such weapons to be a possible primary.

His third grenade launcher shot blew the tail fin clear off a medium-sized transport plane, though the flashing red lights at the control tower signalled a new problem. The men in the glass bubble had a clear view to everything Eric did, even if they could not see him. A lucky guess could ruin his day, all things considered. The fourth grenade was a white phosphorus incendiary grenade into the control tower windows; it did not take more than thirty seconds for smoke to occlude the glass dome, and another minute past that the flames were visible to the Mage.

"Enemy attack! Get to the planes!" A young guy shouted nearby. He was leading four other men, dressed wildly differently with helmets, toward some undamaged planes.

"GET THESE THINGS IN THE AIR!" One of the elder pilots shouted. The plane he specifically was headed for was Eric's next target, a grenade launcher up the engine pipes that ended up fragging a goodly portion of the rear and setting it alight. "HOLY SHIT! HE'S HERE! IT IS THE WIZARD!"

"WHERE IS HE?" The ground crewman shouted. "I CAN'T SEE HIM!"

The pilots looked around in terror, though they crouched when Eric put a grenade into an attack aircraft.

"That's IT! The fire extinguishers!" A lady pilot shouted. "Use the fire extinguishers!"

Eric ignored the antics of the pilots that he could not properly hear due to the silence shell, instead he turned his grenade launcher on a large transport with some kind of boom coming out of the tail. A solid hit to the rear side panels of the plane caused fuel to begin gushing out of the wound, headed toward other craft that were on fire.

Even as he continued his northwest meandering march of destruction, Eric began wondering why the area was now starting to fog up. It wasn't until someone jumped on his back that the Old Mage realized the fog was being used to see him in a way. Before he could do anything about his attacker, though, the abrupt reappearance of the sound around him caused Eric to hesitate, until he realized the hissing sound he heard was the sound of a fire suppression device.

"Quick! Kill him! Do something!" The man latched onto Eric around his neck shouted. The Armored Mage jammed the M79 into the hold latch on his shield, reached up over his shoulder, and grabbed a hold on the harness of the man around his neck. "Oh crap!"

"Off me, belligerent!" Eric shouted ferally before he heaved the guy up and forward; the pilot flew some several meters until he landed with a sickening crunch on top of an undamaged fighter.

"Oh shit, he is here!" the lady fighter pilot shouted.

"Commendable, to use a fire extinguisher to compromise my invisibility," Eric congratulated her. "You change nothing, however. One way or another, I will clip the wings of these birds — permanently." The Mage pointed to a transport aircraft several rows down from where he stood. "_**A furious cloud of sulphur releases its energy within in a massive Fireball**_," Eric chanted in full view to twenty IJA personnel, though each of them hit the ground when the aircraft exploded from within.

"Oh, holy shit, he's the real deal!" a mechanic shouted in despair.

"If you value your lives, Air crewmen, get out of my sight. I do not seek lives today, but I will take them as necessary." Eric turned away from them, though he deliberately interposed his shield between the remaining of their rank and himself.

-x-

"This is it! He's really here, several mechanics have radioed the sighting in! Be ready for direct action!" Mei Matsushita ordered of the Miko in the back of the troop transport truck.

"_HAI_!" The fifteen volunteers with her responded immediately.

"Coming up on the — oh, holy shit!" The sound of an explosion up ahead partially drowned out the driver. "That was massive! What the hell did he just do there?"

"By the Gods," Mei swore as she looked through the small window to the driver's cabin and past the driver to the airfield. "It's worse than I feared. Far worse."

"He is trashing the airplanes! We have to stop him, regardless of Hitomi's bleating! This monster can't be allowed to keep going!"

"We engage him directly, try to overwhelm him. Driver, take us right up onto the parking lot for the planes," Mei ordered of the Army Sergeant at the wheel.

"You got it, Priestess, and good luck!" The Sergeant drove through part of the chain-link fence to enable access to the ramp space directly. He made it as far as the second rank of planes before debris destroyed the front axle of the truck. "This is as far as the truck goes! We are on foot from here!"

Mei was the last out of the loadbed of the truck, though it did not matter in the end. The rest of the volunteer squad had stopped dead when they caught the first full sight of the destruction wrought by one man. Equipment, planes, fuel, all scattered and much burning in a systematic north-to-south destruction campaign by the Armored Mage.

"We move! Spread out into teams of four, and attack him as one! Do not let him escape!"

Another explosion rocked the group of priestesses, but they quickly recovered and broke down into four-woman teams. Following the sound of the blasts was simple enough, one blast happened roughly every twenty seconds and made for easy tracking of the target. Another indicator of where he was came in the form of the screaming aircrews running away from the Mage as he conducted his assault.

"I see him — oh my!" An Archer stopped and held her hand to mouth in shock.

"Is he — oh, no!" Mei looked to where the Armored Mage was aiming, a pair of airplanes that had escaped the carnage on the parking lot and were preparing to take off. He fired a shot — the weapon he used sounded of a 'bloop' or a drop of water in a well, then a little more than a second later one of the planes folded in half just forward of the wing. The pilot ejected seconds later, followed by the second plane's pilot ejecting a moment later before the first plane exploded from burning fuel and ordinance.

"Parachutes! They're safe!"

"Thank the spirits for that! We need to stop him!" Mei pointed her naginata to the Armored Mage, who was slowly strolling up the line of planes with the strange explosive weapon in hand. The 'Bloop' was heard again, this time aimed into the parking area and at a large ten-engine bomber.

"Follow me in!" Mei shouted as she took to heel with the intent of charging him down.

The archer stopped partway to nock and loose an arrow at the the armored monstrosity, which simply struck the back of his armor and sheared into three pieces on impact. So far as Mei could tell, he may not even have noticed the shot, given he was still reloading the single-shot grenade launcher without any form of pause after the hit.

"You're mine, demon!" An anti-demon specialist shouted as she approached the enemy. A paper evil-sealing charm was applied to the back of his armor, though when she dodged around the shield on his left he was still moving. "What? It didn't work!"

Mei ignored the failed sealing attempt and brought her Naginata down upon the shoulder of the target. In this, she did see him flinch, probably from the immense racket of metal on metal. The priestess made sure to grind the blade down his shoulder, his back, and partway down his leg, though the effort did not even scratch the paint on his armor.

"What gives here?" Atrebas asked as he rotated partially to see what was trying to attack him. A second arrow struck the Armored Mage, this time in the helmet, which caused him to flinch again. "Ah, the priestesses come! I was expecting you far sooner than this, however."

"I challenge you, demon!" Mei shouted as she brought her Naginata up to ready position.

"Still hung on the errant belief that I am a demon, foolish priestess?" Eric chuckled mirthlessly. "Very well, I accept your call to combat." Surprisingly, he raised the old United States break-action grenade launcher, aimed eastward, and fired a shot. Mei saw briefly the blast, then watched as a strike fighter lost most of its nose and cockpit to the blast. When she looked back to the Armored Mage, he had secured the Grenade Launcher on the reverse face of his shield. "Your move, Miko, but be quick about it. I have not all day to play with inexperienced priestesses."

"Arrogant ass!" Mei did not defer to him on armaments, she simply stepped forward and brought her Naginata up in a slash from his legs to his left shoulder.

Her first attack with the Naginata was also her last. In trying to attack Eric's groin, she tried bypassing the arc of his massive tower shield, a fatal mistake. The Mage simply brought the bottom edge of his shield down on the haft of the naginata just above the blade, and pushed down hard. Between the blade against the tarmac, the pole in her hands, and the edge of the shield, the pole splintered and broke before Mei could complete a second attack against Eric.

"What? My — my naginata!"

"Arrogant wench," Eric spat his contempt for her. "My estimation of your ranks is not unfounded. You only think you have a clue how to fight blade and shield." Eric began marching past her, and by extension past the other Priestesses. "Feel free to challenge me again, after you have learned how to do battle in close quarters. Until then, I have work to do; stay out of my way, if you value your lives."

Mei watched him walk past casually, assured of no threat, and was furious for his arrogance. "I will not be defeated so easily!" She bolted for the severed head of her polearm, picked it off the tarmac, and charged down the back of the moving Armored Mage. The High Priestess made it to the Mage and tried impaling him with it after jumping wildly at him, but succeeded only in bouncing off his massive shoulder plate to land on the tarmac.

The Armored Mage stopped, leaned over slightly, and reached down to the Priestess. To everyone's shock, he simply grabbed the front of her kimono (and, given her yelp of surprise, also managed to grab her chest binding), and lifted the Priestess with one hand to eye level — leaving her feet dangling several feet off the ground. "I give you credit for your tenacity, arrogant wench, but this is neither a battle you can win, nor a battle you are beholden to. Do not force me to eliminate you; I am not here to claim lives." Without further word, the Mage simply let her go; the several feet drop to the tarmac caused her left leg to fold under her with a sickening crack of bone and a shout of extreme pain from Mei.

After the enemy Mage resumed the use of his grenade launcher, one of the junior Priestesses asked the most poignant of questions: "Now what?"

"Nothing," Mei answered with clear resignation. "We do nothing. We can do nothing." To those listening, they did not hear the voice of their leader, but the voice of someone who had seen a nightmare and could not shake it off.

-x-

"Holy shit, amigos, that is...wow," the Mechanic Lead in Hangar 3 groused, looking toward the burning and shredded aircraft.

"That says enough," a senior Structures mechanic said, pointing to the Miko who were now retreating from the ramp area. "Must be the Mage in there."

"He must really not have liked being bombed," one of the Engine Mechanics guessed.

A ten-engine strategic bomber lost a wing to something exploding against the wing root. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure he was not happy about the IJA bombing him," an elder Maintenance Inspector lady confirmed.

"Wait, I think I see him! Over next to the burning Crane Strike Fighter!"

"Yeah! That is him!" A technician on a scissor lift shouted.

The Armored Mage stopped partway across the taxiway in front of the hangars, aimed a weapon at one of the few undamaged strike fighters, and fired. A second later, the grenade launcher round blew up against the side of the fuselage, collapsing the landing gear and setting fire to the engine on that side.

"HELL YEAH!"

"Atrebas for President, when we shitcan the IJA!" One of the Maintenance Supervisors shouted as a wan joke.

Most of the mechanics in the hangars had turned out to watch the carnage on the ramp, and all turned out when word started circulating that the Mage was involved. So, Eric had an audience when he popped off his last grenade of the plane-smashing spree, this one into the tail section of a transport craft. Again, the mechanics cheered the carnage wrought on the Imperial Japanese Air Force, mostly because they knew they would not be fixing the fighters and transports thus damaged.

"Atrebas! Atrebas! Atrebas!" Several of the mechanics began chanting in old Roman Gladiator style, to the point that a minute in, the entire hangar crews were shouting it as he approached.

The Old Mage stopped in front of the Number 3 Hangar, looked back and forth at the mechanics, then raised a hand for silence. "Mechanics! How many of the Imperials or Nazis dwell within these structures?" he asked.

"None, _jefe_," an electrical engineer answered immediately. "They don't like our facilities. They won't even come in here to use the restroom, _senor_."

"All they want with this airport is the parking space and the control tower, and you just destroyed both of those, great one," an elder engine mechanic noted.

"This spares me the task of incinerating the buildings, then," Eric noted. "I sought the inoperability of this facility, but if the IJA uses it only in passing, no need for unnecessary damage to life, liberty or property. If I may, which way to the nearest exit on the north face of this air facility?"

"Wait, sir! Incoming trucks from the south!" A technician on a boom lift reported. "Six trucks and two IFVs! They're strobing a blue light toward us!"

"My resupply is here," Eric noted with good cheer. Activity came to a veritable halt for the few seconds more the trucks took to arrive at the hangars.

The first truck of the convoy was the surprising one, whereby the load bed contained four more Armored Infantry with the same armor as the Mage. "Hot damn, old man! You trashed them all! Why did you not save any for us?" the first trooper off the load bed asked the Old Mage.

"I was unaware you wanted to clip any wings this morning, Katy," Eric answered with a clear hint of humor. "This was the easy part, though. With the loss of their air power, the Imperial Japanese will certainly be infuriated."

"Let them be," an older lady in armor said after she dropped of the back of the second transport. "Your resupply is on the third truck, Atrebas. Do we need to do anything to the buildings?"

"No, so long as the control tower is torched to foundation, the Imperial Japanese will want nothing to do with this airport again."

"Holy shit, _jefe_, how many are you?" a Supervisor asked in a shocked tone. "Ten? More?"

"More," Eric answered. "My direct apprentice is not here, though. Is she heading up a second column, Tabitha?"

"She said she would come in by a different route," the older lady replied immediately.

The third truck stopped almost immediately next to Eric. "Hey, big guy! We've got more ammo for you!" a teenage guy said.

"Excellent! I feared having to go down to swords to finish clipping the last few wings of the IJAF," Eric said with clear relish. "How many grenades do I have left?"

"About two hundred, sir," the kid answered. "How many you want?"

"Forty, for now. I do not suspect I will need to cause much more mass destruction. Did we bring in the extra rifles?"

"Yeah, they're on the last trucks," Tabitha answered.

Eric looked to the mechanics, who had crowded nearby but not too close as to offend the rebels. "Mechanics! If you value your freedom and honor, take up arms and join us in driving the Imperial Japanese out of Brasilia!"

"HELL YES SIR!" Someone in the crowd shouted, joined quickly by shouts and cheers from most of the remaining personnel.

-x-

(30 minutes after start of attack)

"3rd Company, listen up! we have a situation at the airport, and supposedly the Mage is involved with it. This is not a normal rebel attack! We move in, suppress and surround! There's only one of him, and twelve IFVs on our side! We have the advantage, we use it!"

"_HAI_!" half his vehicle commanders shouted in response on the radio band.

"Advance with speed! The faster we close in on him, the fast we bring our firepower to bear!"

The _Tai-i_ (Captain) in charge of the company assault force made sure to keep an eye on the VDE system, to show him what his other vehicles were seeing around them. For the most part, all the traffic on the roads was neutral / civilian traffic, though a few civilians were out on foot and flagging the systems 'red' as possible hostile contacts. This, even against what he knew to be blaring raid sirens, which were used to warn the civilians to stay indoors and thus avoid being shot.

After a particularly hard turn down a four-lane road headed toward the airport, the lead vehicle in the column blinked gray. "Point, Company Command, is your VDE malfunctioning?" the Captain asked.

"Sir! The point vehicle took a rocket! We're under attack!" the vehicle commander for the number two IFV shouted on the radio. During his call, two more vehicles had gone gray, signaling damage or destruction.

"Rebel attack! They're in the apartments on both sides of this road!" The rear vehicle reported. "I'm engaging with chaingun!"

"No! We can't kill the civilians! We don't want to spread rebellion!" Even against his wishes, the two rearguard vehicles opened up on one of the apartment buildings with their 35mm chainguns. "Damnit! Infantry storm those buildings!"

"He's here! The Mage is here!" The Captain's own vehicle commander reported.

The _Tai-i_ looked to the view monitor for the main gun, then swore. "That's not the Mage! The paint schema is all wrong! It must be a different rebel wearing similar armor!" He swore vehemently when said rebel fired off an old Panzerfaust into the broadside of one of the IFVs; the explosion was audible through the hull, confirmed moments later by the IFV going 'gray' on the Vehicle Data Exchange panel.

"Wait, there are more than one of him?" Another armored Rebel appeared in a different window, and again fired off a very accurate Panzerfaust shot into one of the rearguard APCs.

"There's three of them! A third to our right!" one of the vehicle's infantry compliment said, aiming his rifle up through one of the rifle ports in the side of the vehicle.

"Get us out of here!" The Captain shouted. "We can't take fire like thi—" The off-tone CLANG of something striking the hull was only the audible memory of what he never felt or saw. Consciously, the Captain knew his IFV had taken a missile hit from one of the rebel's rockets, though he found himself wondering why he had not been immediately killed by the fragmentation.

Some minutes passed, with the _Tai-i_ completely unable to move but able to stare up at the blood-spattered ceiling of his IFV. From what he could see of the gunner's station, the poor teen at the cannon controls was dead, with half his head shredded off by the fragmentation. Of anyone else, he could not see, and could not move himself to where he could see them.

The rear door of the APC opened after a few more minutes of waiting, wondering, though the first person he saw enter was a lady in a mechanic's coveralls, carrying a German assault rifle. "One alive here, sir! He has some brass on his collars!"

"Pull him out," a strange voice ordered. "Any others in this vehicle?"

"No, they're all dead," the lady answered. Of her, the Captain considered her a bit of a charming lady, not someone he expected in a mechanic's uniform, and certainly not what he expected of the rebellion. "Poor bastards."

"Remove them, strip their gear and munitions, and cover them with a tarp. They will be buried at a later time. Is the vehicle serviceable?"

"Jose, give me a hand with the Captain," the lady said after she slung her rifle over her shoulder.

"Any weapons and munitions recovered are to be cycled to persons who shall take up arms against the Imperial Japanese. Their bloody campaign of suppression in Brasilia ends today!" The Captain heard an older lady order, probably to her subordinates.

The Captain was roughly dropped on the back of some kind of transport cart, though his head lolled to one side and he could see his surroundings. The shooting was over, though now it was replaced by myriads of rebels looting the Infantry for weapons and ammo, and even the vehicles!

Moments after he was dropped on the cart, something he never wanted to see (in person, at least) walked into view. "This one is an imperial officer, a _Tai-i_ if I read his insignia correctly."

"Fuck 'em, sir. The officers are the worst of the lot."

"Best or worst, I do not ignore the wounded. _**Green leaves dance, spirits of Nature energize unto one of your creation, restore the form intended with Sylvan Regeneration**_," the Old Mage chanted.

It took several minutes past when the Mage moved on, but the Tai-i could slowly begin to feel his body return to nervous control and feeling. After five minutes of listening to the Rebels loot his column, he could even sit up and look around.

"Look alive! The Mage wants to hit the garrison next! We gotta go!" an older guy shouted to the rebels nearby him.

"But...why?" The Captain asked nobody in particular, watching the rebels move out in the few surviving APCs.

"He's a crazy fucker like that," a rebel mechanic said. "I dunno why, but he's obsessed with beating Imperial Japanese asses without killing as many as possible."

"This makes no sense," the Captain replied in a confused manner.

"No shit, _Tai-i_," the Rebel said. "Were I calling the shots, I'd line all your sorry asses up against the wall and hose you. Payback for the millions you've raped and slaughtered over the past century, call it a professional courtesy."

"How nice of you for that courtesy," the Captain said sarcastically in literate Spanish.

"Still, I ain't calling the shots, that crazy fucker with the spellcraft is. He says you live, I ain't going to question it. Enjoy your second chance, and while you're at it, get your ass off my container wagon and sit down with your troops over there." The mechanic pointed to where the other Imperial Japanese prisoners had been sat down in a group and were being lorded over by a mix of seasoned and greenhorn rebels.

-x-

(20 minutes after the attack on the IFV column)

"Cobalt, Command, you are cleared to enter and disable," Tabitha relayed the order by radio.

"Beginning operation now. Fates be with me," Eric said with reverence, since he knew he was about to approach a defensive palisade that could easily slaughter him in seconds were he not invisible and protected by heavily magicked armor.

The problem with the plan Eric intended was simple: once the paralysis set into effect, there would be only a limited time for the other rebels to capitalize on the disabling of most of the Garrison. This was compounded by a stark necessity of the plan, whereby the Rebels had to 'stage' (prepare for the attack) several minutes away from the Garrison, lest they be hammered by the same paralysis that Eric intended for the enemy.

Eric rounded the last corner of the apartment building he stood by, the last civilian tenement between himself and the main Imperial Japanese garrison. Again, Eric was forced into a slow, deliberate shuffle so as to minimize the clang of his armor against the ground and against other armor plates. Unlike the last Imperial Japanese force he hit with this trick, these Imperials were very much alerted to his presence and expecting something from the Rebels.

Defenses around the Garrison were tight, to say the least. Just in easy sight, Eric could count no less than ten machine gun nests and four missile-armed troopers, obviously waiting for a clear shot at himself or one of the other Armored Rebels. More to the point, the presence of areas that had been completely surrounded by razor wire identified the presence of landmines — something Eric did not want to test his ability to pass through without detonating them.

The one obvious entry to the facility was heavily guarded, much as he expected. A brace of four main battle tanks sat at the gate to the facility, with two machine gun nests and at least a platoon of infantry nearby. Eric expected no less than the full montage guarding the welcome mat; this was Imperial Japanese territory, and they would fight tooth and nail to retain it. On the other hand, they were likely not expecting what Eric intended to dish out.

The Old Mage continued his shuffle down the line of razor wire, headed toward the entrance area and the foreboding main battle tanks. He figured the timing to be close, but he could probably slip by them before his invisibility wore off. It was not more than ten minutes before he arrived at the guarded entryway, and with it he had to slow even further to ensure he was not heard.

"Man, wonder when these assholes are going to show up," one of the machine gunners complained.

"Patience," a non-commissioned officer chided the gunner. "We face the Old Mage. Is a sly, sneaky old fox, even in that garish armor. Part ninja, part samurai. Stay on your guard."

"All bad news," one of the troops with the armor-busting missiles commented.

"Anyone tried the new rice balls that McDonalds is selling?" The second Machine Gunner asked.

"Have," a rifle infantryman commented. "The teriyaki rice balls are not half bad, but not half good. Don't do the Sushi Rice Balls, trust me."

"Factory worker probably pissed on the sushi, thinking only IJA would buy them," the non-com officer said.

"Not surprising," the same infantryman complained.

Eric continued shuffling past them, even to the point of coming within a meter of one of the machine gun nests, but his invisibility was so complete nobody could tell he was there. Of sounds, he moved slow enough that he could hear his own heartbeat, his silence was so thorough.

Past the tanks, Eric continued into the heart of the garrison and mainly toward the infantry barracks where most of the soldiers would be readying for possible combat. His target location for the most effect from the paralysis spell was the fourth block of barracks buildings, which would almost perfectly center himself in the garrison. The shuffle was still slow-going, mostly to prevent being heard, but Eric could pick up the pace slightly once past the hyper-alert front guard posts.

It was still not fast enough. Eric passed the first block of barracks without issue, but the second was a different story. "WHAT THE FUCK?" Eric heard clearly from the far side of a barracks window, which meant it was in a language he recognized and did not need translation for.

"ALARM! THE WIZARD IS IN THE BASE!"

The shouts was enough to inform Eric that his cover was blown. His right hand went down to the integral pistol holster and came up with the 1911A1 he preferred for armored combat, and he simply dumped all seven rounds in the magazine into the window nearby as suppressing fire. Before his last round, Eric was already charging forward toward the target zone some two blocks ahead, in the hopes that getting this far into the base would provide enough distraction to get there unhindered.

Past the third block and to the fourth, Imperial Japanese Infantry had begun to clear the barracks with weapons and a foul attitude, though it did not last long when they saw the charging Armored Mage. "Make way!" Eric shouted to the infantry dead ahead of him, not particularly intent to kill them but certainly not intent on stopping his run. Most of them cleared, but a few were foolhardy enough to stand in his way; one had a leg broken massively by Eric's right foot, another was crushed between the wooden wall of his barracks building and Eric's shield.

"_**Sea of waves, sky unhindered, heed the will of those within you. Create constriction upon all beings inside a Paralysis Shell**_,"Eric ran through the full length version of the spell, even as several Infantry officer began laying down concentrated rifle fire on his back and right flank.

Just as before, the green field of paralysis only took two seconds to expand away from Eric, and with it roughly 80 percent of the Garrison was rendered immediately destitute, unable to move voluntarily. Of the remaining twenty percent, most were so immediately frightened by the collapse of their brethren that they either dropped their weapons and seized up in fright, or began running away from Eric at best possible speed.

"Command, Cobalt, reporting garrison has been paralyzed. Begin the operation, timer is on for 120 minutes," which was the maximum safe time they believed they had, even though Eric's paralysis skill would last far longer.

-x-

"What the hell happened? How did one man do this?" An American IJA Infantryman asked nobody in particular.

"He got about 12,000 of us with that spell," one of the few unaffected officers guessed, based on how many were standing out of the rough Division formation in the Garrison.

"And of the remaining troops, roughly 2000 have fled or gone insane from terror," the Sergeant guessed. He had personally drilled two Infantryman and a mortar Sergeant who had flipped out and started doing random, incoherent actions.

"Leaving a thousand scattered troops in the Garrison that is about to be overrun by rebels, and oh, by the way, if that wizard is close enough to shaft us like he did, he's definitely close enough to take shots at us directly," the American Infantryman said.

"Two stinking undermanned battalions out of a whole Division formation." In the distance, the sound of 35mm chaingun fire signalled the arrival of the Rebels from the airport. "And now our American friend here is proved correct. You seem to have the best grasp of what is going on, do you have a recommendation, Corporal?" the Sho-sa in command of the remaining troops requested.

"Find the biggest guns we have, hammer on him repeatedly, and hope we can knock him unconscious like our fighter-bombers did."

The Sho-sa relaxed a bit, convinced that the American Corporal was not going to recommend a cowardly action and thus did not require silencing (by way of katana or pistol). "There is an armory north of here for special operations personnel. Get to it."

"_Hai_!" the detachment with him (not even a full squad) replied immediately. With only the barest of hesitation, they charged out into the northern muster ground of the Garrison, headed for the SpecOps armory two blocks north of the grounds. So far, none of the rebel formations had made it into this muster ground, though the sound of rifle fire was at least up into the barracks areas, a sign that what little resistance remained was disorganized and incapable of stopping the rebels.

The armory was already open, with two of the ISO Officers waving for them to enter the armory. "Tai-Sa, where is the rest of your team?" the Sho-sa asked.

"Paralyzed with most of the rest of the Division, sir," the junior officer answered. "Take what arms you can, these circumstances are no good for a pissing match."

"Where are your heavy weapons, sir? Anti-tank, anti-bunker?" the American IJA Corporal asked.

"Back right corner. Give my Sergeant a hand with the M350, we will need it."

The American Corporal took only five seconds to find the Spec Ops Sergeant trying to drag the -350 out himself. He took a few moments to grab several LAWS rockets and sling them over his shoulder, then lent his back to the effort of bringing the heavy weapon out of the armory.

Outside, roughly a platoon of remnants had assembled at the northern edge of the north muster ground and were digging in furiously, anticipating a hellish last stand against the Rebels and mostly against the Mage, Eric Atrebas in the flesh (or, in this case, armor). The Sergeant and the Corporal crab-walked the M350 forward to a machine gun fighting position prepared for it, where the M350 sat on an elevated rise and the troops that serviced it were slightly concealed by digging in.

"How much ammo do we have for this?" the Corporal asked.

"Four boxes, we were supposed to receive supply tomorrow."

"A day late, a yen short," the American IJA Corporal groused. "Here," and he handed off two of the LAWS rockets to the Sergeant. "Try to pop him in the head or chest, if we can knock him out we can stop them."

"Easier said than done, Corporal," the Sergeant groused in kind.

"Rebels come! To arms!" Someone in the front line shouted, then rattled off a burst of fire at a figure running between buildings. There was no hit, but the return fire from several windows was answer enough that the Rebels had control of two-thirds of the base in less than 30 minutes.

The 'how' was simple enough. Four IFVs entered the muster grounds from two directions, their 35mm cannons providing enough answer as to how the Rebels were doing so effectively against seasoned Imperial Japanese Infantry. The vehicles were followed by Rebel infantry on the ground as a follow-up.

The coup de main from the rebels, however, came from the center path into the muster grounds. The shield of Eric Atrebas stood front and center, the three triangles, one stacked on the apexes of the other two, providing a strangely effective aiming point for the M350, though not for long. A grenade landed in the machine gun bunker and detonated before either Sergeant or Corporal noticed, taking out the crew of the weapon.

To the sides and slightly behind Eric Atrebas, five shields flanked him to both directions, each shield decorated different and just as garish as the Armored Mage himself. The shields hid an individual Armored Infantry trooper, and to the right of the shields an assault rifle or light machine gun spat fire and lead at the defending remnant. Grenades did not even phase the Armored Infantry; all a trooper had to do was brace the shield on the ground and wait for it to detonate. Throwing past the shields did no harm, either; the trooper kept walking, the blast and fragmentation harmless to their rear.

The rifle and machine gun fire from the Imperial Japanese Infantry was extremely accurate, especially on Eric Atrebas' very recognizable shield. Just the same, the return fire from the rebels was accurate and murderous, especially given the Imperial Japanese were outnumbered nearly 10 to 1 in this phase of the engagement. Their resistance came down to the last trooper emptying his assault rifle into Eric's shield at point blank, then trying to club the Armored Mage with it.

When the last trooper was dropped by a machete, so ended the meaningful resistance in the Garrison. Eric pulled the man's identification tags, as a memento of the last resistor who died standing his ground.

-x-

"We've cleared everything south of this muster ground, and we have a few demolitions specialists clearing out the minefields. Only question remains, what do we do with 12,000 pissed-off Japanese POWs?"

"Hose the lot of 'em," a Mechanic from the airport recommended.

"Unacceptable, and as it happens, counterproductive," Eric cut that line of thinking off immediately. "We have more than ample manpower to retain control over these prisoners. Japan will not negotiate for prisoners, and we cannot hold them indefinitely."

"So summary execution is the best option, then," the same mechanic fronted again. "Don't look at me like that, wizard. These are war criminals, not soldiers on the field of honor."

"The solution that comes to mind is to load them on a ship and send them back to Japan as a warning to their leadership how easily I can compromise an entire division of their troops," Eric answered coldly. "You cannot defeat a monster by becoming a monster, Mechanic, even if you become a monster for all the most righteous reasons."

"Your arrogance will cost us all dearly, Mage. These are not men, these are rapists and murders!"

"Enough!" A mechanic supervisor shouted. "The Mage has given you an order, Kylie. Start frog-marching them to the rail yard and load them into trains to take them down to Sao Paulo for shipping to Japan. And no personal shit, or I'll shoot you myself."

Eric was silent for several moments after the lady mechanic stormed off toward the prisoners. "Her rage is personal, is it not?"

"Rape victim," the Supervisor said. "Imperial Japanese officers, several of them. It's common practice for the IJA."

"That, and massacre," Carlos Sandeira noted with a soured tone of voice. "I can't help but agree with her, but I also agree with you, _jefe_," Carlos nodded to Eric. "If we win this by becoming worse monsters than the Imperials or Nazis, what difference does it make in the end? We replace one nasty with another."

"We then become the hunted, the rebelled, the monsters to be slain," the Supervisor noted.

"I have more than one reason for sending the Imperial Japanese home," Eric commented. "Killing them all is counterproductive to my goals and aims, as much as it sounds out of line with personal desires. They live, for another day, because their fate is far stranger than mere death."

Several of the supply warehouses had zip-tie handcuffs in 3000-pair shipping units, ostensibly for the infantry to take prisoners in riot situations, but in this case they were to be used on the Infantry to secure them for transport. "At least we won't have problems keeping them secured. The civilians are coming out of the woodwork in droves to take charge of the prisoners," the Mechanic Supervisor said.

"It is good. With the rebellion taking Brasilia and Sao Paulo, we have a foothold to begin clearing the continent," Vladimir opined.

Eric had wandered away from his subordinates / apprentices, to where the IJA had set up their machine guns, and specifically to the one machine gun that was far different from the heavy Type 102 MGs. "Vladimir, what is this weapon?" Eric indicated the weapon with the two dead noncommissioned officers near it.

"This? Oh, wow, it's an M350 automatic grenade launcher."

"It is kin to this?" Eric asked, presenting his M79 grenade launcher for view.

"Yeah, but much nastier. You can fire one round every fifteen seconds out of that thing. This M350 will fire three grenades a second, or roughly forty grenades in the time it takes you to fire two."

Eric was silent for several seconds, inspecting the weapon in question thoroughly. "Impressive," he finally answered, some thirty seconds after Vladimir explained the weapon's capabilities. After a few moments more, Eric lifted the weapon by one of the legs of the tripod. "It is not unduly heavy, though I would not want to carry it by hand for an extended length of time. Could I, say, have it mounted to my shield?"

"What?" Armored Infantry Mechanic Allie Brannock asked for clarification.

"Could this weapon be mounted to my shield, facing down from my grip point, so all I must do to use it is raise my shield and aim it at the target?" Eric demonstrated by aiming the bottom edge of his shield at one of the barracks buildings.

"Dude, that might work," Carlos opined.

"I could probably do it, but it would take a lot of work in metalwork and software. If it can be done, it ain't happening today," Allie answered immediately.

"I am a patient soldier," Eric smiled to take some of the fang out of what might be misconstrued as an insult. "No rush on this upgrade, but it would certainly be more functional and more lethal than the simple M79 launcher. The faster I can bring fire to bear, the faster I can clear the battlefield in my favor."

-x-

(30 minutes after capture of the Garrison)

"Here," a senior Priestess pushed the paper charm down the arrowhead to where it was on the shaft of the arrow. "You are ready."

"Doing it now," the archer specialist Priestess ducked around the corner quickly, drew back, and loosed the arrow at the armored form of the Mage down the road.

Her aim was true; the arrow struck the armor of the Old Mage just above the shoulder, in the massive samurai flat-board shoulder plate. Contrary to expectation, the combination of charms on the arrow allowed it to bypass the enchantments on Eric's armor, and the arrow stuck into the shoulder pad without penetrating to the trooper within.

"It worked, Yukino! It penetrated his armor — EEEEPPP!" the Senior Priestess recoiled away from the corner, and her right hand immediately went to her left upper arm to stanch the blood coming from a bullet wound.

"Damn! These Armored Infantry are being protected by a hundred rebel foot soldiers! We can't get another clear shot!" a third Miko in their group called out.

"What do we do now? Fall back?" the archer specialist asked the senior Miko. When no response came back, the Archer looked over her shoulder and did not see the senior Priestess. A look under her right arm to the ground behind her told enough of a tale, with a significant puddle of blood terminating at the neck of the senior priestess — her head was gone, except for her jaw and the neck. "Sorry," the archer apologized for not being able to stop her demise, then turned and bolted from the corner.

A block east of the position where she took the shot, Archery Specialist Yukino stopped at the next corner to check for rebel activity. A few moments of observation gave her the impression it was clear; a few civilians were moving east to get out of the line of action, but nobody with a weapon was visible. She braced back out of the line of view of the road, prepared to run across the street, but a hint of movement behind the glass of the corner diner next to her caused her to freeze.

It was the wrong reaction, all things considered. She barely noticed the hand slam through the plate glass window, though she did notice the hand grip the back of her kimono top and latch on to her in such a fashion that she could not free herself from it. Less than a full second later, she had been pulled through the window remnant, though in so doing a shard of glass impaled the back of her leg. By adrenaline and luck on where it stabbed her, she did not notice the glass fragment.

"Hey! Let me go! Let me — " She tried slamming the assailant with the bottom of her bow, but the echo of wood striking metal caused her to jolt. When the hand drew her through the window remnant, she saw exactly how someone could punch through plate glass and catch her like she had been. "Oh, great. How did you go from the block over to here in less time than I took to run?" She asked the trooper with the large rifle in literate Spanish.

"I think you have me confused for the boss, little girl, but thank you nonetheless," the trooper with the rifle said in a clearly feminine voice. "Name's Nicole Whitman, Armor Team sniper. And the boss does want to talk to you, so you'll be introduced to him shortly."

"Something about an arrow you shot at him or something. He didn't sound too happy about that," the trooper holding her off the ground by her kimono said. Yukino looked over her shoulder at the other trooper, but was surprised to see no firearms on her person whatsoever. "I wouldn't struggle too much, little girl. You'll tear your outfit up."

"Fine, fine, you don't have to hold me up like this," Yukino groused. "With a rifle like that, if I tried running I would only die tired. I'm not going anywhere any time soon, okay?"

"Smart kid, knows her limitations," the sniper noted. "And speaking of the boss," she continued just before the sound of moving armor became obvious to Yukino.

"Bring her out here, no need to occupy the diner if we do not have time for breakfast," an older guy's voice declared over the radio system built into their armor.

"Yes, sir," the sniper answered immediately. "After you, Anita," Nicole pointed to the shattered window.

"Priestess first," Anita picked her up again without warning, held her out the window, and set her down on the far side of most of the broken glass.

"Atrebas, we have the garrison completely secured and heavy equipment is in our hands. We've accounted for a total of 15,500 troops, leaving roughly 400 still missing," an older rebel guy told the Armored Mage.

"A few loose squads may be berthing, or they're caught in non-critical sections of the city. They'll be flushed out soon enough," a teenage girl in tactical gear amplified the older guy's report.

"This leaves only the headquarters of the Priestesses as a standing threat," Eric Atrebas judged. "They will have to be dealt with, but I suspect I will need to take direct action against them. I doubt my technique for dealing with large forces would be effective against Priestesses." The Armored Mage turned to Yukino. "Come here, Priestess Specialist."

"What?" Yukink asked, slightly confused by his Japanese pronunciation.

"Come here," and he waved her over with an old American pistol, which was ample evidence of his intention.

"Sure," Yukino replied warily. When she took a step, the glass shard in her right leg ground into a muscle, and without the adrenaline to mask the wound or the pain, she immediately lost the ability to stand. She immediately dropped and screeched her pain, holding her right thigh and rolling back and forth in pain-addled confusion.

"Aww, shit, medic!" someone shouted.

"Grab her! She's grinding that in!" someone else shouted; two pairs of hands stopped her from rolling back and forth. "Medic! Over here!"

"Jesus, plate glass window fragment in her leg!" The sniper said. "Hey, cart! Cart! Get that Cushman (1) over here, we can use it to brace her!"

"I thought she was clear of all the glass," the lady that grabbed her protested.

"Kid, calm down, we can remove the glass shard," the sniper said. "Eric, can you heal this wound?"

"Easily," the Old Mage said. "When you have cleared the glass, I will see to it."

Yukino was carried by three rebels over to something hard and laid down on it. "Put her face down," an older lady's voice said. "The glass is in the back of her right leg. All you guys, forward of the Cushman, now! I'm going to have to flip her skirt to get to the glass."

"Oh, this is embarrassing!" Yukino half-shouted in pain. "And why are you helping me? I'm an enemy! I just shot you, you crazy wizard!" She said, staring at the armored midriff of the Armored Mage.

"You shot at me, yes, but you are not an enemy," the wizard answered. "I am staring at the courthouse, medic. Do what you must, while I prepare the necessary healing spell."

"You really don't think I'm an enemy?" Yukino asked. "I mean, I am trying to kill you, crazy wizard guy."

"You are trying to kill me on a false premise, Priestess," Eric answered calmly. "Unless you serve the giants of Jotunheim, you are not my enemy."

"Hold on, Priestess, this will hurt a bit," the medic said. "Forceps, please, and I need two to hold her leg still."

"I will hold the leg," the armored trooper that dragged Yukino through the window answered. "Eric, can I use the spell to heal this one?"

"You should be able to, if you borrow part of my casting ability," Eric commented.

Yukino could not see what was happening below her back, and considered herself thankful for it. She didn't want to know what was going on, and she certainly didn't want to see herself bleeding all over the place. So, she simply stared at the shield inside edge of the Armored Mage. After a few moments, she took to counting the grenades cartridges in his magazine (2) for the M79 grenade launcher as a way of distracting herself.

"Okay, we got all the big parts, now for the small ones," the medic said. "Brace yourself, this one is going to hurt."

"Do it," Yukino said, expecting that much.

She yelped in pain once, then again a second time, and the third fragment caused her whole leg to spasm in reaction, but the armored hands kept her from moving too much or kicking anyone. "Okay, that's it. Your turn, Mages."

"I have sent you the spell, apprentice. Use it."

"_**Reach of the Heavens, holy light of the Valkyrie, shine down and restore the proper form with Aurora Healer**_," the 'Apprentice' Mage chanted.

Yukino was extremely surprised that the light enveloped her in a rainbow display, not unlike the pictures of the aurora borealis she had seen in textbooks, but more surprising was how quickly she felt better because of it. Within three seconds, she could tell there was no pain in her leg, no pain anywhere on her, and her drowsiness from blood loss disappeared in roughly ten seconds. The light only lasted fifteen seconds, then faded away into morning sunlight.

"Done. You may stand, Priestess. Much thanks to ye, medics," Eric Atrebas acknowledged.

"Look, man, healing's my job, but Japan is a sick country. You better have a damn good plan for healing them, or this plan of yours ain't gonna work," the one male medic in the group said.

"I have several concepts," Eric answered while Yukino straightened out her kimono and hakama. "So, Priestess, I believe we need to discuss this arrow of yours, and your intention in trying to kill me." When Yukino looked up to the Armored Mage, she realized the arrow was still in his heavy shoulder plate, just above the top edge of his shield.

The Archer Specialist Priestess sighed and relaxed a little. If they went to all the effort of correcting a wound such as she received, they were not likely to kill her. On the other hand, what her fate would be now left a lot to be guessed at.

-x-

(20 minutes later)

"I am approaching the Miko headquarters. Rebels, hold here; I will deal with this as is appropriate."

"This is Sniper, I have overwatch with Anita. Watch your ass, boss," Nicole answered.

"This is Vladimir, I have overwatch to the west, Carlos and Tabitha are with me. No activity on this side."

Eric popped open the M79 and pulled one of the non-lethal grenades from the top of his grenade magazine. Given his purpose required living people, defeating and discouraging the foe was his method, and rendering an enemy incapacitated was the easy way to achieve it.

"Command, Cobalt, jumping off now. Wish me luck," Eric said after he closed and cocked the grenade launcher. A few of his comrades and several rebels flooded the channel with wishes of luck, though Eric did not wait for them to clear before he stepped out.

Within moments of his appearance from the alleyway into the main road, the Miko were on him. Several arrows bounced off Eric's shield, and one arrow penetrated the surface but did not clear all the way through it. Eric did not give the ladies at the front entrance the time to take a second shot, he loosed the first of several CS gas grenades he planned to deploy.

The gas irritant in CS, commonly called Tear Gas, was enough to immediately bring the archer priestesses to a halt, driving them away from their preferred shooting positions. As they retreated, Eric continued advancing behind his shield, while he reloaded the grenade launcher to fire another shot. Two more arrows bounced off his shield and one missed, even as Eric closed into the CS gas effect area.

With his launcher reloaded, Eric prepared to fire directly on one of the Miko, but hesitated when he realized what he was aiming at. "Is that Priestess pregnant? What is she doing on this battlefield?"

"She probably was not expecting to have to fight, boss," Nicole said. "I wouldn't shoot at her."

"I would not dishonor myself by shooting at her. Not even a self-respecting barbarian would do so." Eric moved his aimpoint to another archer, lowered the grenade launcher to waist level, and fired. The round slightly flitted in flight, though in the end it struck her on the right arse cheek at sixty meters, a painful impact but not really damaging.

"OW! MY ASS! HE SHOT ME IN THE ASS!" The priestess in question was also rolling around on the ground in pain, though her grip was on her rear unlike the archer Eric dealt with several minutes prior.

"Enemies are almost into the trap sack, boss. One more go should do it," Katy Hoyos said.

"One more, understood," Eric loaded up a third CS round, took aim in the general direction of a concentration of archers, and fired. In this case he did not aim to hit any of them, though the grenade in question bounced off the pavement and smacked a particularly tall archer in the face. Eric had little doubt she was knocked unconscious by the strike, and probably would need his spellcraft to correct a broken nose. "Third grenade is out, they are fleeing into the snare. Rebels move in and capture as best as possible."

"On it," Marcos answered immediately.

"Miko coming out of the building! Watch yourself!" Nicole warned the Armored Mage.

"I expected this," Eric commented as he dropped a fourth less-than-lethal grenade in his weapon. This one was not a gas canister, though, it was intended for direct application.

"The Demon is — " One of the priestesses began, but hesitated when Eric aimed the grenade launcher around the edge of his shield in their general direction.

Eric fired the 40mm Rubber Buckshot round at thigh-level on the gaggle of Miko, aiming deliberately for their legs to incapacitate them. 130 rubber pellets fanned out from his grenade launcher into a three-meter arc by the time they reached the Priestesses some twenty yards away from him, and all nine of the Miko took painful hits from the weapon, even enough to bring the front four to their knees from the impact.

The next phase of the action was for the rebel infantry. Two flashbangs were detonated nearby the hostile Miko, which finished stunning them so that they could be easily captured and rendered compliant. When the infantry approached the structure, more flashbangs were flipped inside the windows of the first floor to disorient the occupants and prevent them interfering with the operation. It only took the infantry five seconds to drag clear and zip-tie cuff the Priestesses.

"Damn good work, infantry forces! We're ahead of schedule," Tabitha said.

"Firing CS," Eric announced before he fired a gas grenade in the open door and down a hall toward the center of the building. The grenade bounced off one wall and landed out of sight of the doorway. "I am done with the grenade launcher, now I enter and evict."

"Infantry forces, follow in behind Eric and protect his flanks! Secure any Miko he disables and remove them from the structure!" Marcos ordered.

"Deploy shotguns with nonlethal rounds! Aim for the legs, their skirts won't stop anything!" A sergeant in the rebels ordered as his men filed in behind Eric.

"Sir! Yes sir!"

"He's here! The Mage is here!" Someone in the building shouted after Eric took two steps inside.

-x-

Hitomi knew after the first reports of 'The Mage' attacking the airport, he would attack the Miko headquarters. With the death of the Imperial Japanese air force in South America, there would be only one threat remaining to his battlefield supremacy, and that threat rested among the Miko.

In the Miko's headquarters, only two rooms existed that would provide enough room for a proper battle between a Priestess and the Armored Mage. With the Rebels holding the front of the building, the briefing hall was now in their possession and out of the question. That left only the cafeteria.

With Mei Matsushita captured or killed at the airport, command devolved to Keiko Yamamoto. Keiko, knowing this was likely a lost cause already, decided a demonstration was in order for the Miko and specifically to prevent more casualties to the Priestesses. The cafeteria tables had been cleared and folded up, leaving only an open space and a ring of Miko around the perimeter of the room.

The first they saw of the rebels was not Eric, but several tactical gear-equipped Infantry. "_Jefe_, got something here. All the remaining Miko are in this room, just standing around," the infantryman reported from outside the door by way of a radio.

"Understood. I shall be there momentarily."

Hitomi held her breath against the dread of listening to Eric's armor, though it did not last long. If nothing else, Eric was definitely a punctual nightmare, always showing up at the worst possible time...

Surprisingly, once Eric entered the room, the first thing he did was to set his shield down and unlatch his left arm from it. Without the shield, the only weapons Eric had on his person were two broadswords and a pistol.

"This is surprising," Hitomi commented after Eric stepped away from his shield. The arsenal on it — assault rifles, a grenade launcher, and even three LAWS rockets — told a tale of a soldier who expected to fight hard against anything that came his way. "Why fight without the shield today, Spellcraft Operator?"

"I use a shield because I expect a campaign, not a series of unrelated individual battles. For today, though, this is not part of that campaign; I expect a different engagement, and a shield is inappropriate equipment for what I must do."

"And that is?" A different Miko asked.

"Correct an illusion I inadvertently created," Eric answered pensively. "An illusion created by a certain easily-deciphered variation of what I intend."

"On that, I call you out," Hitomi said in clear anger, stepping forward from the other Miko surrounding the room. "Your phrasing had no ambiguity, Mage. We act, to prevent the destruction of our way of life, nothing more, nothing less."

"And just the same, you have illustrated the illusion," Eric replied calmly. "As I said, only after the fact did I realize how easily my actions and phrasing could be misconstrued, especially given the wave of nationalism that has gripped the planet in the past couple hundred years."

"What? Nationalism? What do you speak of?" Hitomi had not uncoiled from an Iaijutsu striking stance, which Eric expected.

"A belief in the nation as the superior unit of organization is new," Eric noted. "There are aberrations, of course. Greece, Rome, Byzantium, but in most cases the national identity is a new advent. In my case, the superior unit of organization was the city-state of Durgan, a mercenary town that hired its army out to the highest bidder. Nation-states, as you understand the term, did not exist in the era I was born."

"Wait, what are you saying? You are older than our entire way of life?" Keiko Yamamoto asked directly.

"In a matter of speaking, yes," Eric confirmed. "As I said, an inadvertent misapplication of principle. A modern society looks at its entire nation, all persons and contents, as interlinked. You, Shrine Priestesses, also look at yourselves as interlinked to your nation, your culture, your way of life."

"This is obvious," Hitomi answered sharply. "Start making sense, Wizard, or I will strike you down and be done with it."

"Fair enough, though I will warn you that sword is ineffective against my armor." Eric sighed. "When I said that I intend to sunder the Imperial Japanese government to dust and echoes, I meant just exactly that. I made no distinction about the people of Japan, or for that matter I made no distinction about the people of Nazi Germany. I made no such distinction, because I have no intention toward the people, either toward help or harm. My target is only the government that sanctions the wholesale slaughter of those it suborns. My intention to the Shrine Priestesses is none; as your order does no active harm to society, by technicality I have no necessity to do anything with you, for you, or against you."

"How — how can you talk of such a thing in so callous a fashion?" Keiko asked abruptly. "You cannot simply destroy a nation without destroying the society under it! It cannot be done!"

"Because you put too much credence in the nation," Eric answered coldly. "West of my hometown, Durgan, several city-states traded leadership and 'national identity' four times in the sixteen years I trained in as a Bladesmen. The towns in question did not suffer chaos or depredation with the changing of their leadership. You say a nation cannot suffer the loss of its leadership? I say you put too much credence in the monsters that hide behind the government you swear fealty to."

"Now you are insulting our nation! I will not suffer this!" Hitomi tensed, her hand over her blade.

"If you consider the reality an insult, use that blade," Eric challenged the swordswoman. "I do not give insult, I operate only on the reality, and because I am not a modern citizen I can only see things through the eyes of a mercenary swordsman from ancient times. I have seen monsters, but this corruption and depravity is only a repeat of some of the larger city-states from my era, and only on a planetary scale instead of city-to-city."

Hitomi spared no more words, she simply struck out with her blade. The sword strike was expert, aimed at his chest with the intent of removing his arm and passing through his left lung. The sound of the strike was significant, though against expectation of the Miko, nothing happened.

"You will want to have your sword examined by an expert after such a strike; a cracked blade would be a fatal weakness in further close-quarters engagements." Eric continued his idle pacing. "I do not ask anything of you, I do not require anything of you, I shall not harass nor shall I allow harassment against your ranks. If you wish to leave the city, I will ensure safe passage for any number of you. If you wish to remain, I will see to it you are treated equally to any other person here. To you all, priestesses you are, I issue only one challenge. Move out into the town, from the business sectors out into the slums, and ask of the people what has happened to them. Ask them to tell you everything that has happened to them, the good and the bad. When you know the reality of those who have been suborned, compare it to what you have been told is happening by those you swear fealty to."

"What do you expect us to find?" A miko on the northern wall of the room asked.

"I expect you will find only what you allow yourself to find, nothing more, nothing less," Atrebas answered sharply. "I have no expectation of impartiality, even if I was to drop you in the worst slums of Sao Paulo to your own devices. Because you were raised in the hyper-nationalist ethos, you likely cannot divorce yourself of their justifications. Some of you may see and understand the reality, but for most of your rank, I do not expect it."

"And now he accuses of us of bias! A wizard who gives insult at such a level has questionable wisdom, regardless of his power!" An archer specialist bemoaned.

The Old Mage snorted loudly. "I swear an oath against my Commission to the Norns, here now in presence of witness and under the watch of the Fates themselves, if your rank proves me wrong, if you can prove to Existence that your humanity exceeds your nationalism, not only will I publicly rescind my declaration of bias but I will honor your order in appropriate fashion."

Most of the Miko simply chatted amongst themselves, wondering what Eric meant by his intent to honor them. Keiko thought hard about what Eric said for thirty seconds, then gasped when she realized what Eric intended.

" 'If you can prove to Existence that your humanity exceeds your nationalism...' " Hitomi trailed the repeat off, considering exactly what Eric meant.

She had to repeat it twice more before she understood properly what Eric meant. When it finally did register what he intended them to understand, the rest of his declaration fell into place. Hitomi dropped her sword, shocked to the point of losing conscious grip on the weapon she had turned against a man she now realized did not deserve it.

-x-

(1 hour later, in the plaza in front of the Old Government Building)

"MAKE WAY FOR ERIC ATREBAS!" A rebel shouted as Eric joined the gathering at the central square.

"ATREBAS! ATREBAS! ATREBAS!" The crowd chanted repeated as Eric moved forward to the center of the plaza.

The Japanese had made sure to make their presence known and visible to anyone in the area of the capitol building, by way of putting in a massive 100-foot flagpole in the center of the plaza. The Brazilians had made their position known; they wanted the flagpole down, and the flag of their nation returned to its rightful pole which stood empty at the southern edge of the plaza. The only question remained, how to bring the pole down without using explosives...

With the arrival of the Old Mage, the affair was now open to more options, as far as the city rebellion forces were concerned. "Master Atrebas, can you bring down this pole? It is the last bit of defiance against the Imperial Japanese."

"Aye, I can remove this pole, but I request a provision," Eric answered the former mayor of the city.

"Name it, _jefe_," he answered coldly.

"I wish to retain the Imperial Flag, and a cutting from this pole, as a reminder of the history here that we have changed course upon."

"Done. We were planning on burning the flag, but if you want to keep it for historical purpose, it is yours," a rebel mechanic answered.

"Even as you defeat a foe, never dishonor them," Eric explained. "The victor gets to write the history, but the victor shall not be the judge of that history. Do not conduct yourself in such a fashion that history will condemn you for it."

"Whoa," a Rebel Infantryman gaped. "That's deep."

Eric moved to the area of the flagpole. "All persons, stand clear of the pole. I shall fell it in one stroke; be ready to catch it when it falls."

"Yes SIR!" A dozen voices shouted. It took some moments, but the crowd parted ways to allow Eric to swing clear at the pole.

Eric sat his shield down and unlatched from it, to clear both hands for the task to come. After he approached the target, a single hand drew his green-glowing broadsword, which he then presented pommel at heart level and blade into the sky, directly in front of his face with the flat facing the pole. "My sword, in defense, for all Existence," the Bladesman gave the traditional salute of his duty, then advanced a single step and brought the sword down through the pole at an angle.

"Did it work?" a reporter asked, his cameraman having recorded the whole scene. His question was based on the effortlessness of Eric's slice.

"It worked," Eric answered. "I could feel the recoil of striking the pole, and there is a gouge in the stonework around it." To prove it, Eric pushed on the pole to force the cut angle apart and down to the ground. Once he acted on it, the pole began its slow topple to the ground.

With the fall of the flagpole, the cheers of the people, rebel and civilian alike, arose from the crowd. Some cheered for Brazil, some cheered for the rebellion, but the largest portion cheered for Eric. It was this last group that he expected the most, and feared the worst.

The flag never made it to Eric, before he made the move he knew he had to make. Before he sheathed his sword, the Mage cut a ring from the remaining base of the pole, a souvenir of the struggle to take the city. The sword still did not return to sheath, even as Eric advanced to the stairs of the capitol building, and mounted them to stand between the columns of the capitol. The reason he retained his sword, though, was to salute the people of the square and the flag of Brazil as it was raised on its traditional pole.

When the flag of Brazil was restored, Eric dropped his sword salute and returned it to sheath. In the second after, he raised his arms for silence from the crowd, that he could be heard. It took a bare minute, but eventually there was a modicum of silence from the crowd, perfect for Eric's speech to be heard by man and camera just the same.

"Brasilia! Your battle is hard fought and properly won!" Eric held for the cheering that his salutation would inevitably draw. "This battle is won, but this campaign is far from over. The Germans most certainly are already on the move, and they will need to be dealt with in the field and in their home city of Manaus. When that is done, the outlying garrisons can be routed and proper reign may be restored to South America, as is your right!"

Eric again paused for the cheering. Even if he derided the nationality as a breeding ground for atrocity, Eric knew that the national spirit was just as powerful as the _esprit de corps_ that held together Durgan and its mercenary formations — or, for that matter, the rebellion itself against the Nazis and IJA.

"The campaign is far from over. I have said before, I am a patient soldier, as my foes are patient soldiers themselves. I expect a decade of engagement against them, so I warn you all, do not expect rapid momentum to overtake the whole war. This battle was the opening volley; I doubt further strikes will be as fast or crippling as this one. Harden your resolve, sharpen your blades, and stand at the ready, for the war shall only be concluded by the hands of those willing to put it all into the battlefield."

"WE STAND WITH YOU, SIR!" Someone in the crowd shouted. An instantaneous cheer replied to that shout, to the point that Eric had to raise his arms once more for silence.

"Thank you, all of you. This is your world; it is time to retake it from the monsters who hold dominion over it." Eric again halted for the cheering, which was significant and telltale. After a minute, it bled over into chants of his house name, Atrebas, which he raised his arms to silence them one last time.

"I have one last thing to say. Remember, this is your world, and you are liberating it from monstrous nation-states who sanctify omnicide for their own gain. Be wary, all of you, that you do not repeat the mistakes that have forged the trail of blood in the wake of the Imperial Japanese and Nazis. Do not become the monsters that you seek to overthrow, lest the result become worse than the initial problem we seek to correct. That is all."

-x-

"A week ago, I thought I was dealing with a barbarian in command of immense magical power. Today, I know better," Prince Torahito noted to the others in the room.

"Not elegant with his words, Highness, but his message is clear and direct, which makes a natural soldier of the people," Hotaru noted.

"For that audience, he does not need elegance," the specialist Priestess of the Miko noted.

"I believe different," the Crown Prince judged. "He needs only the base desires to rile the crowd and rally them to the cause of rebellion. He uses a different level of elegance than we expect to control their gorge, prevent massacre. The news reports were clear, he is deporting the Japanese troops, not executing them. His purpose is something different than we are being told."

"Here is the transcripts of his speech to the crowd at the capitol building, Highness." His secretary handed over a manila envelope. "Have a heads-up from Defense Intelligence that they have a transcript from a High Priestess of a speech he gave to the Shrine Maidens in Brasilia."

"_Arigatou_," the Crown Prince acknowledged. "Okay, reading over his speech to the crowd, my guess was right. He is walking a narrow road here, between outright total war and preventing massacre. Read this, see if you see a pattern here."

Shrine Maiden Specialist Hotaru received the folder and began reading. She read it a second time, all the while the Crown Prince was watching her read it. "Highness, this provides no clear picture on the surface. If he wanted to defeat us easily and quickly, eliminating them all would be easier? I am not so versed in military matters, yet that would be a valid strategy?"

"That is the textbook fast solution," the Crown Prince answered. "Eliminate enough enemy resistance and the enemy loses the ability to fight. The answer would have to lie elsewhere; can you filter this through his divine purpose?"

"To win Ragnarok, _sensei_?" Hotaru looked down to the document, and in reality ended up staring at it for several minutes.

"Transcript from his speech to the Priestesses, Highness," the secretary waved another folder at him. On days like this, the Crown Prince did not enforce protocol in his quarters, he wanted an informal atmosphere to get the best and fastest intel and analysis from his subordinates.

"Excellent," the Prince Torahito was the first to read it, and the first to be shocked by the comments contained within. "This is...ambitious." He dropped the folder on the low table that held the rest of his intel documents. "He intends to destroy Imperial Japan without destroying Japan physically. Or, more appropriately, he only wants to destroy the government."

"That clarifies his prior statements," Hotaru acknowledged. "Wait...wait a second...this phrase, is it a direct translation?"

"He spoke directly and in Japanese," the Prince confirmed. "No translation involved."

"That...wow... 'If you can prove to Existence that your humanity exceeds your nationalism' is what he said? He really does not like the notion of nations."

"Apparently not. Given his past that he explained in these lines, it makes sense," the Prince judged.

"Given the history of this planet, it makes sense," Hotaru commented dryly. "Not that I question our purpose, Highness, but more have been killed in war since 1900 than in the prior 600 years. I question his reasoning, but not the inherent logic behind his comment."

"Since the takeover began under Tojo, every Emperor has tried to limit the bloodiness, but the Military plays by their own rules in that," the Prince agreed with her. "The Nazis are only slightly better in that respect, but the difference is miniscule."

"Okay, in here he says for the Miko to prove their humanity exceeds their nationalism...in this speech, he beseeches the crowd to not become the monsters they displace...in his first declaration, he's concerned about the death of innocent people." She went silent, staring into a corner in complete absorption of thought. "Those purposes...they are interlinked."

"How so? I am not seeing the link, Hotaru-san."

"His divine purpose is the answer, Highness. His purpose is consistent in saving lives, and he is a disciple of the Fates, which means his commission is likely to win the war Ragnarok."

"Those do not seem linked, Hotaru-san," the Prince noted.

"Taken separately, no. Consider the War Ragnarok, though; even the Gods are supposed to lose. If an enemy cannot be defeated on skill, what is the other way to defeat them?" Hotaru knew the Prince would know this one, given he was trying to have the IJA do it to Eric Atrebas.

"Overwhelm them by numbers," the Prince answered readily.

"There you go, Highness. His purpose is to win the war Ragnarok, his method is to skew the odds back into the favor of the Gods by way of sheer numbers. The only way he can do that is by forging a society that multiplies far and wide, and the larger the equation at the lower levels, the larger the result farther down the line of history he will write."

"Wait...if that is his plan, what does this have to do with Imperial Japan?" Prince Torahito asked.

"We, Highness, we are simply in the way of his divine purpose, and we are also the foremost party in massacring the population he needs alive as, for lack of a better term, breeding stock."

"And because I cannot stop the Military from butchering those we conquer, we are doomed to the fate between an unyielding military machine and an inescapable divine-commissioned ass-beating rabbit-breeder." The Prince laughed at the soured expression on Hotaru's face. "And if I took this analysis to the Prime Minister, I would be laughed out of his office and probably poisoned within a fortnight. If it was not for bad karma, we would have no karma whatsoever."

"Sad but true, Highness," Hotaru acknowledged the point. "And, once again not challenging the purpose of the Empire, but when you read the final line of his intention, I cannot disagree with his purpose. Right now, given his immense spellcraft power, his backstory, and his sudden appearance here on planet, I cannot but assume he speaks the truth."

"He will rescue a world from the clutches of evil empires, and they will love him for it. He will structure a new society, one that breeds large, and threaten the stability and support of the world, and they shall still love him for it. As a hero to the people, he can do no wrong; they shall love him because of that illusion. Against a foe of that caliber, we have already lost."

-x-x-x-

(Elsewhere in Existence)  
(Northern border, Mystic Territories)

When the Dragons speak, among the mystics their word is unchallenged.

When the Dragons demand that Vala Atrebas be commissioned into the Mystic Army for the purpose of ending the war and bringing peace to the planet, many eyebrows went skyward, but she was so commissioned.

Six months prior, it was unthinkable that a human girl from another dimension could be the answer to the problem. The Dragons thought otherwise. So far, the Dragons were correct. Losses among the troops had been cut roughly in half and ground loss to the humans had been reclaimed; now, the Mystic Alliance was beginning to take ground from the Humans, a result wholly unexpected a year prior.

"This will not be a simple one, milady Atrebas," her escort White Dragon commented dryly. "They have made it known; these are the Knights of the Border. They are some of the best the Humans have to offer."

Vala Atrebas sighed. "I have been expecting this battle, but dreading it just the same. These will not be easy opponents, but not insurmountable. We will take casualties, but it can be done and it can be done in my method." The last was not so much a statement of intent as it was a challenge to the Elven Ranger-Knights in the battle party.

The lead Knight-Ranger grumbled. "What is your recommendation, 'Princess'? Do we ask them to stand down their arms and quietly submit to our reign?"

_Smart-arse punk knight_, Vala thought but did not say. It was no secret the Ranger-Knights did not get along with Vala, but they also did not get along with the Dragons. And the Dragons had far more of a temper than Lady Atrebas. "These are our weapons of first strike." Vala reached down below the map table and brought up a bundle of magic rods. "Each of these is enchanted to be reusable, so you will use these as your primary weapons. A single strike of the orb against an enemy will activate the enchantments, at which point the target will be hit with two spells: _paralysis_ and _sleep_. Without direct defense against those skills, a person is immune to paralysis spells only one out of every five. Against sleep spells, the natural defense is one in sixty. There are only a hundred Knights of the Border; by the numbers we may have only one of them capable of defending against both."

"Interesting. Now we featherbed the humans, who are still trying to kill us all," the lead Ranger-Knight complained.

"I repeat myself; any time you wish to stand down, I shall accept your resignation without prejudice," Vala commented.

"I will neither give you the satisfaction, nor shall I put myself out of line of ascension for when you eventually fail, 'Princess' Atrebas," the Ranger-Knight said sharply.

"I hope you are a patient one, for I have no intention of failure." Vala pulled two of the rods for her own use. "Distribute the rest of the rods to the front-line Knights. We will be in battle within the hour."

"Lady Atrebas!" A Scout Sylph approached the command meeting area. "The Human Knights are breaking camp now. They may intend to close with us in the next ten minutes."

"So much for an hour," Vala groused. "Get the rods distributed and be ready to use them frequently." The Ranger-Knight knew better to disobey a direct order in the face of the enemy, so he took up the bundled rods and moved to the Elven camp to begin distribution.

"He is a spiky one," the Scout commented, gesturing to the retreating form of the lead Ranger-Knight.

"Pride goes before the fall, and the average among the Elves is a surfeit of pride," Vala judged. "They really don't like taking orders from anyone except themselves."

"Pride goeth before the fall, but not before the broken arse-bone, young one," her escort White Dragon noted. "The Elves will readily boast of their many victories, but the will not admit their many defeats. That is one reason among many why the Dragons respect your ability to lead."

"Speaking of the Dragons," Vala segued back onto topic. "Can you have four Black Dragons lay down a pattern of acid spittle along here," and Vala pointed the area out on the map. "If we can deny them movement through this plains area, they become pinned between acid on the right, a river on the left, and us to the front."

The Dragon in question was silent for a moment. "Your request is relayed. The Black Dragons will be overhead in a few minutes. Other Dragons will join the front lines to change the odds in our favor."

Vala picked up her first Targe (3) and strapped it to her left arm. The second Targe went to her right arm and was strapped on tight. Her helmet was specially enchanted by Sylvan Mages to prevent impact damage — it would not serve well for the Lady of the Fates to be knocked cold in battle. The last thing she had to worry about was the new Magic Rods, of which she hefted one in each hand, and she was ready for battle.

"A duty must be seen to. Let us join battle," and Vala waved her escorts toward the battlefield, leading the charge herself.

* * *

**Author's Chapter Afterword**:

This one is just the beginning of several messes Eric is headed for, and you can see exactly what nightmares he is building for himself.

First off, you see Eric directly targeting the Imperial Japanese Air Force. By playing such a direct strike against those assets, Eric just informed the IJA leadership exactly how much a threat he considers those units to be. On the other hand, you also see the inherent weakness an air force has against a concentrated infantry attack, and you also see how easily destroyed a plane is by spellcraft. Expect to see more of that in coming chapters.

Second, the garrison attack, and specifically the no-massacre philosophy he is using will come back to haunt him. By leaving those troops alive and simply sending them home to Japan, the IJA will rotate them back into the battlefield at a later date, though their effectiveness against Eric Atrebas will be sub-par given how badly he defeated and demoralized them. It goes without saying, having paralyzed them with spellcraft, they will not be much inclined to approach Eric for CQB again, lest they suffer the same fate or worse next time.

The big, loud, screaming, red flag in this chapter is actually in the Miko's section. Eric has pointed out a distinction in terms of nationalism that both is and is not true. He demonstrated that the Miko are using their nationalism as justification to overlook the myriad war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Government and the National Socialist Government. On the other hand, Eric is putting too much credence in the distinction between a people and their government; much as he stated, this is not the BC part of the calendar, and nationalism has taken root. Trying to pull that weed, or attacking the leaves of that weed, will not necessarily be completely effective and may cause far more damage than he intends.

As to the effects, I will leave that to your imagination, for the time being.

Nothing much else to cover for this chapter. I will have a few things in the afterword below here, but I think I have covered everything.

**NEXT U**P: _Hauptscharfuhrer_ 'Mad Max' Rudelt goes head to head against Eric Atrebas. And, in the midst of this, the world's press coins a term that will rewrite the history books for millennia to come...

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**Review Replies**: Three reviews for this chapter, and some poignant questions. Here goes!

_Biggie 1447_: Hope this counts as some more ass-kicking spellcraft for you, as well as a blend into more infantry action. This should also answer what happened to the rebel cell...

_Meow 114_: The effects of Eric's learning now will have echoes in the centuries to come, echoes that will make the name of the game that you see in the backstory of the Joker's Wild series.

_Sieben Nightwing_: And much thanks to ye for the beta work, as always :)

* * *

**The Gripe Sheet**: No standing gripes from the prior chapter. Thanks go out to _**Takeshi Yamato**_, _**Sieben Nightwing**_, and especially _**Necroblade**_ for pointing out some very large red flags for me.

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**Footnotes**:

(1): **Cushman** is the generic name for a type of small cargo truck used to move palletized or light material around. If you go specifically by the Cushman brand, the vehicle shown here is the Cushman Titan XD.

(2): This is a proper use of the term **Magazine**, as it falls under the definition of an ammo storage device for feeding a weapon. The storage for 120mm gun rounds in the back of an Abrams turret is also a magazine, and the feeding device that you insert into a rifle or pistol from the bottom is a magazine, NOT A CLIP.

(3): **Targe** is a type of buckler (Small shield) that is also weaponized with an armor-penetrating spike in the center of the shield, giving a user both offensive and defensive options with a single small shield.

* * *

**Included Works**:

_IRL_:

— The Main Battle Tank seen in this chapter (briefly) is effectively the same as the Japanese Type 99 MBT. You will see a lot more of it in coming chapters, trust me.

— The Japanese M350 is the IJA equivalent of the Mark 19 Automatic Grenade Launcher of IRL fame. Look into it, it is a seriously badass weapon.

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**Spell Registry**: No new spells have been logged at this time.


End file.
